We're All Mad Here
by ScrimshawPen
Summary: It might have mad scientists, robots, and dangers she's never imagined, but the Wasteland is home now. For the kid from Vault 101, survival on the outside comes down to a question of what she'll do - and who she'll become - to make it through. Rated T for violence, drugs, and sexual references.
1. Peas in a Pod

***Obligatory disclaimer: I do not own Fallout and will not profit from this story in any way.***

* * *

" _You have a daughter of your own? Then you'll understand. I would give up everything to keep her safe. Even my freedom. Even my wife's dream. The world out here is no place for a child. Cardiology. Pediatrics. Psychiatry. Whatever your needs. You'll find I can handle, well… I can handle just about anything."_

" _There can be no second thoughts about this, Wilder. We need a doctor, not a dreamer. Once the two of you come in, you can never leave. As far as your daughter knows, she was born in the vault. She'll die in the vault. Do you accept these terms?"_

" _Without reservation."_

* * *

If there was trouble in the grade-school classroom, there was seldom any question about who was to blame. The child never tried to hide it: whether it was taking responsibility for the teetery desk pyramid she'd gotten the others to build when the teacher stepped out of the room or apologizing when a particularly messy experiment went wrong, she always stepped forward to accept blame - and invariably helped clean up afterwards. Yes, Marilyn Wilder was a handful, but she was also among the boldest and brightest in her cohort, a natural leader and the kind of student a less constitutionally-nervous teacher than Beatrice Armstrong would delight in. As it was, however, the vault dwellers half-blamed the doctor's nine-year-old daughter when her teacher took an early retirement for health-related reasons, thereafter emerging from her quarters only to surprise people with her darkly unstable poetic offerings.

Even as the council leaders chastised the girl and urged her absent-minded father to rein in his child's behavior, there were those among them who secretly wished that their own offspring had half the vibrance and creativity of this cuckoo who'd fallen into their nest. Why, the Overseer's own daughter, Amata, was a shy little thing, too timid to be remarkable, a perfectly forgettable wallflower who followed the rules so perfectly that she never did anything significant, whether good or bad. The others fell out uninspiringly into groups of sheep like Christine Kendall and Paul Hannon or bullies like Butch DeLoria. No one wanted to admit it, but Vault 101 was not thriving, and hadn't for generations: the population was shrinking, depression was rampant in every age group, and everywhere one looked there was a malignant apathy that stifled innovation.

Similar only in appearance - both brown-eyed, olive-skinned girls who wore their dark hair long - Marilyn and Amata were nevertheless fast friends, and constant companions from an early age. Their birthdays fell within days of each other - Marilyn's was July 13, and Amata's was the 16th - and they always helped make each other's party special, even with a shoestring budget for decorations and gifts. By the time they were both five, Marilyn had noticed that Amata never seemed to want to go home to her father, preferring instead to linger in the Wilders' cramped quarters long enough to be invited to dinner; for long afternoons, they would play in a corner of the clinic, quietly building houses from the massive overstock of tongue depressors, out of the way of the bustle of the patients going in and out. At first, Overseer Almodovar didn't seem to mind - as he said if the children happened to wander in search of a missing toy, his office was no place for them to play. As they got older, however, he began to scowl whenever he saw the two of them together, and then started sending one of his lackeys to collect Amata long before she was done playing. After the infamous noodle incident of 2270, he forbade his daughter to go to the Wilders' quarters at all, barred Marilyn from visiting Amata at their home, and banned children from the clinic altogether. They still managed to spend time together - at school and in secret corners of the vault - but the idyllic times were over.

Partly a result of the Overseer's interference, but also partly due to their own changing interests, the girls grew slightly apart in their teen years, though they still remained friends. Marilyn had moved beyond her childish antics by this point and no longer tormented her teachers with disruptive behavior, though she did continue to push the envelope with her questions. Mr. Brotch, a cynical, jaded man who had been better suited to a different profession, took to assigning essays in response to every difficult question, dismissing his student to the vault's database to search for her answers there. The papers she turned in, after reading them aloud to Amata and discussing the topic with her at length, were quite often flawed and incorrect because of the computer's limited information and poor search function, but they did betray a dangerous amount of independent thinking, as well as an unhealthy interest in the world outside. These small rebellions did not go unnoticed, and many eventually found their way to the Overseer's desk. Marilyn realized this at some level, but considered it a good thing: she'd succeeded in speaking her piece, and was willing to let the world respond how it would.

Though a perfectly satisfactory student herself - indeed, her grades were consistently the highest in the class - Amata couldn't always follow her friend's leaps of imagination, nor understand why she found all of these questions worth pursuing, but she still listened attentively when Marilyn told her about aspects of history, sociology, and science that the official curriculum never touched upon. These mini-lectures always ended with the perfunctory question, "It's interesting, isn't it?" And Amata always nodded, smiling tolerantly at her friend's infectious enthusiasm. She herself was much less interested in breaking convention, having inherited a portion of her father's conservative attitude; this reticence was a constant source of frustration to Marilyn, and the root of most of their disagreements. Every time Amata had been punished severely in her life, it had been because of something Marilyn did or said; as she repeated, again and again to deaf ears, Marilyn's way of doing things always brought misery - to herself and to everyone around her. She wasn't asking her to stop being who she was, but could she please be more careful about it? At this point, Marilyn would usually adopt a waspish tone and accuse Amata of being a stick-in-the-mud (or worse), and the old arguments would begin anew.

At the end of one such fight when they were both 13, Marilyn became uncharacteristically serious. " _Please_ tell me you'll loosen up a little when you're Overseer. Help me make this vault something to be proud of."

"I'm not going to _be_ Overseer. I don't want to be. You know that." Marilyn didn't say anything. _She_ knew - and Amata knew, for that matter - that Almodovar intended the supervisory track for his only child, test results and inherent ability notwithstanding. Amata had other plans, however. Drawn by the memory of her childhood's happiest moments, she aspired to work in the clinic when she was older, to train as a doctor with Jonas and James. She wanted to help people, not to boss them around; let someone else do that. At their age, children were expected to volunteer for ten hours every week at the duty station of their choice; while Marilyn usually divided her time between the lab, the reactor, and the hydroponics bay, Amata almost always spent her hours in the clinic, learning and helping however she could. " _You_ should be Overseer, Marilyn, not me."

The other girl grimaced, looking down at the essay that had sparked their fight in the first place ("Why the GOAT Exam Is Necessarily Rigged"). "Yeah. That'll happen. Just do me a favor, okay: if and when you _do_ take over for your father, promote me out of whatever hole he's thrown me into. I don't want to die before I've done something important."

"Of course. My first decree as Overseer will be to switch places with you. Won't that confuse them." And just like that, their anger forgotten, the two girls were laughing together again, children with all of the optimism that comes with being young.

* * *

The teenage years marked a growing schism between Marilyn and James. They were both passionate, opinionated people with a tendency to feel and express things deeply, and this was doubly true for Marilyn in mid-adolescence. Anger over her situation, while mostly held in check at school and other public obligations, tended to spill over in private with her parent; challenging conversations became shouted arguments at a moment's notice, and his resolute calmness only infuriated her further. An awkward witness to some of these flare-ups, Amata didn't understand her friend's constant attempts to provoke the doctor; _her_ father's only communications took the form of cold, unilateral commands, and she would have given anything to be able to have a real conversation with him. She said as much one day at lunch.

"You don't know how lucky you are. Your dad is _nice_. I don't get why you treat him like you do."

This remark rang hollow to the angry fifteen-year-old. "Oh, stuff it, Amata. You don't have to live with his bullshit. He _grounded_ me to quarters and clinic for the next two weeks. For my last essay. Overseer got wind of it and raked him over the coals apparently, accusing him of disseminating 'seditious literature.' Dad dismissed it as a schoolgirl fantasy. He can't even stick up for his own kid."

"He's worried about you. _I'm_ worried about you. I don't know how you expected 'Term Limits and Elections for Supervisory Roles in Vault 101' to go down, but my father obviously took that as a threat. You need to stop doing that sort of thing, for both yours and your father's sakes. For God's sake, Mari, grow _up_ already. You're not a kid anymore. You're too smart to be this stupid."

Marilyn's face grew ugly. "Right away, _Almodovar_. What else would you like me to do? Lick your boots? Write a poem in honor of your father's twentieth year in charge?" She shook her head, flipping her loose hair out of her face. "You're becoming as bad as he is. I don't know why I expected anything else." She picked up her tray and moved to a different table, leaving her only friend fuming in stunned shock. It was weeks before they spoke again - no small feat in such a small community - and even then there was no offer of an apology, only a shamefaced confession: "I miss you." "Me too." And so they went on as friends, for lack of anything better to do, but something had snapped between them that would never be mended completely; if either of them regretted their harsh words, then neither said so until it was too late.

* * *

All too soon, the day of the GOAT exam arrived, a few months after their sixteenth birthdays, with half the class suffering the aftereffects of a scuffle in the hallways. Mr. Brotch, conveniently too late to witness any of it, pretended not to notice Butch's bloody nose, Marilyn's torn vault suit and split lip, or Amata's tearful sniffling. Butch's penchant for small cruelties had been the genesis for his gang of three, or "Tunnel Snakes" as they were calling themselves now. On this particular morning, what had begun along the usual lines of name-calling had escalated to actual violence after he'd given Amata's hair a vicious jerk in front of Marilyn, who was nothing if not loyal. Paul and Wally at least had the decency not to join into a fight against two girls, one of whom was crying, but Butch still had the advantage with his superior height and strength, with Marilyn only getting one lucky hit in before he'd punched her in the belly, winding her and ending the fight. The only thing you could say to Amata's credit was that she hadn't run; she hadn't helped either, too afraid of those fists and feet to leap into the fray.

The test that they'd spent so much time dreading was inane, with most of the multiple-choice answers either meaningless or equally wrong. Throwing caution and appearances to the wind, Marilyn filled out all of her answers before the questions even began, a straight line of A's all of the way down, and then stared straight ahead, waiting for Mr. Brotch to finish proctoring the exam. When he was done talking, she turned the paper in, accepted his immediate verdict without comment, and was the first to leave the classroom.

Scalp aching from where Butch had yanked her ponytail, Amata took more time, answering how she imagined a doctor - or, at least, a non-sociopath - would answer. It made no difference; he didn't even glance at the paper she set in front of him, but turned it upside down and looked her in the eye.

"Supervisory track, Miss Almodovar. No surprises there." His voice was gentle, sympathetic even, but she didn't notice. In a moment, she too was gone, off to find her estranged friend to commiserate.

"...I _know_ it's not what you wanted, sweetheart, but you could have done much worse. At least this will make you fairly indispensable." Dr. Wilder was speaking normally, but there was a tense undercurrent beneath his cool facade. "I hope you'll come to appreciate the work we do here."

Marilyn snorted in disgust, then caught sight of Amata lingering in the doorway. "Watch what you say, Dad. Here comes our future Overseer. Hey, thanks for the help back there with Butch, by the way. You're a really kick-ass best friend."

"There's no call to be unkind, Marilyn. Hello, Amata. How did your test go?"

"Hi Dr. Wilder. I… I… guess I won't be volunteering here anymore. All of my work hours will be with my dad and the security officers now. I've learned a lot these past few years, though. Thanks."

He gave her a warm smile. "You're welcome. I'm sorry it didn't work out as you hoped. If it means anything, I _did_ recommend you for the physician's track. You'll be fine in leadership, though."

Marilyn leaned against the wall, arms crossed. She also smiled, but it looked forced and it made her lip bleed again. "You know what, Amata? I'm starting to think me'n you were swapped at birth, or maybe both of our dear, departed mothers were fooling around seventeen years ago. What do you think, Dad? It's obvious that you'd rather have _her_ as a daughter."

"That's enough," he snapped, visibly angry now. "You won't talk about your mother that way."

Marilyn wasn't done digging her own grave. "I got the job you wanted, Amata. And I don't even want it! How does that make you feel?"

Amata found her own anger for once, "Ashamed. Ashamed that I've wasted so much time on a selfish brat like you. You don't know what you _have_. What you have to _lose_. You should be grateful that your father gives a shit about you. You're an obnoxious, ungrateful _beast_ and I hope you figure that out before it's too late." Red-faced with anger and embarrassment, she stalked away to compose herself. It was time to find her father and formally accept her role.

* * *

Three years passed relatively smoothly. Once the GOAT had sorted them out, young adults divided their time evenly between continuing education and on-the-job training. After a long cold spell following exam day, there was cordiality, but scant warmth between Marilyn and Amata, and little time to spend together in any case. Butch continued being Butch, however, and they were united at least in self-protection; Marilyn insisted that the two of them should carry police batons in the corridors and train together twice a week in their use. ("After all, I'm not always going to be there when he starts something.") As they got stronger and Butch got whacked a few times where it hurt, the "Tunnel Snake" seemed to shrink from a real threat into a posturing boy, and they stopped worrying about their safety; at around the same time, Amata finally found in herself to _act_ like the Overseer-in-waiting, and shut down not only the attacks, but also the insults. Life became all tolerable, repetitive sameness, day after day, world without end; slogging through boredom, they almost missed the fights. Still, they kept training. Just in case.

One night, however, on an evening two days after Marilyn's nineteenth birthday and one day before Amata's, the older girl broke up the routine. They'd been exercising on the reactor level, which was as private a place as you could ask for in the vault, and just as they were putting their sparring tools aside, Marilyn tapped Amata on the shoulder and grinned, holding up a small bottle of whiskey.

"Want to celebrate? Happy birthday to us."

Amata's eyes grew wide with surprise. "Where'd you get that?" Like all consumables, liquor was tightly regulated in Vault 101. Only adults, age twenty and up, were issued ration cards redeemable for food and drink.

Marilyn shrugged. "Dad's stash. He won't notice. Or, if he does, he'll just think he drank it himself and forgot."

"Does… does he drink a _lot_ , then?"

Marilyn got comfortable, leaning back against the wall and speaking to the ceiling. "Hm. Less than Mrs. DeLoria, but probably more than his patients would be comfortable with if they knew." She took a sip and passed the bottle over. "The man is _not_ happy. I've only just realized it in the last couple of years, but he fits in even worse than I do around here. He's just quieter about it." She smirked, watching Amata's expression after she took her first incautious swig. "You ever drink before?"

Amata shook her head, choking, eyes tearing up from the harsh liquid. "D-d-dad doesn't ever keep alcohol around."

"You get used to the taste. _That_ isn't its selling point anyhow." Despite what she'd said, her mood wasn't celebratory; quite the contrary, her tone was mournful, reflective. "Why _is_ my family so weird, Amata? Me and my dad… we _really_ don't seem to belong here. He dreams bigger than the vault, and I think that's why I do too."

"I don't know." She tipped the bottle for a more careful sip. "There's bound to be an outlier or two in every generation, right? Lucky you."

"Will you open the vault someday, Amata? When your turn comes?" She leaned forward, intent on the answer. They hadn't talked like this in a long time, and she'd clearly missed it.

"I don't know, Mari. I'll have to weigh that decision carefully. There's a lot at stake there. For everybody, not just you."

"What about just me, then? Let _me_ go or I'll be an eternal headache to you. Dad too, if he's still alive by then." Her smile looked sick now. "All threats aside, I don't know if I can take fifty years in this place."

"I don't _know_. I'm sorry."

Disappointed, she sat back. "I guess that's that, then." They didn't say anything else, and when the bottle was empty, each wobbled off to their own quarters and back to the jobs where they'd spend the rest of their lives.

* * *

A month after this last conversation, the fragile stability of Vault 101 collapsed when, taking advantage of a radroach outbreak in the night, James Wilder escaped from the vault, taking with him the remainder of Overseer Almodovar's sanity. No longer differentiating between friend and foe, innocent and guilty, he pursued the doctor's daughter with armed men, tortured his own flesh and blood for information, and threatened any hint of mutiny with immediate execution. By the end of that long, violent morning, a dozen people lay dead, three of them within sight of the vault's heavy door, now rolled aside.

The last person standing, the woman whose reputation would one day span the entire east coast, stood trembling beside Officer Park's body, still holding the gun that she'd fired in desperate self-defense. She'd _killed_ him, a man she'd known her entire life. Him and Wolfe both. She'd _had_ to, because they'd killed her friend. They would have killed her next. Turning back, staying, was no longer an option - not that it really ever had been, not since she'd learned that they'd beaten _Jonas_ to death. They'd crossed a line, and now so had she.

Knowing there wasn't _time_ for this, that more guards would be coming soon - and the gun was empty - the fugitive dropped to her knees beside the third body, checking for a pulse for no better reason than she wanted to touch her hand one more time (her _eye_ was gone, oh God, her _head_ wasn't all there anymore) and stroked the hair she'd often brushed and braided as a child while idling away the hours in the clinic, getting blood on her hand as she did so. Guilt, grief, and horror threatened to overload her already unbalanced psyche, keeping her paralyzed, kneeling here until someone walked up and shot her in the head as well. She wasn't to blame for _everything_ that had happened today, but this… this _was_ on her.

Marilyn had convinced Amata that they should - that they _could_ escape together - and at first their plan had seemed to work, with the confusion caused by the lock-down and the roaches allowing them to slip through the vault unnoticed. But then Amata got caught sneaking back to her quarters to get the Overseer's office key and her own father had her questioned until she was screaming, until Marilyn came to save her. But Amata was slow, scared, and unwilling to fight the people that were trying to kill them, and in the end their escape was only half-successful.

After what felt like an hour, but was probably only a minute, she made herself get up and go. Leaving the gun behind beside the body - an immensely foolish act that she'd live to regret bitterly once she learned more about the world outside - the future Lone Wanderer gave her now former home one last look and stumbled out into the unknown with nothing more than the Pip-Boy she'd had since her tenth birthday, the clothes she was wearing, and a bloodstained holodisk in her pocket. There had been no chance to play it since she'd found it on Jonas' body, but it was there for when she had a chance to breathe. Outside.

* * *

It was high noon, with the sun at its zenith beating down and desiccating every creature unlucky enough to be caught out in it. Lucas Simms stood under the overhang of Megaton's gate, keeping his eyes on the wasteland. He didn't always take up watch out here - the city _had_ a robot deputy on duty, after all - but sometimes a sheriff had to lay his own eyes on the land. That's how he had the dubious honor of being the first wastelander to lay eyes on Megaton's newest misfit.

His first inclination was to wonder how she had survived a journey of even a few miles from the vault in the hills. That blue jumpsuit marked her as easy prey far worse than actual nudity would have done. One encountered screaming, naked, juiced-up raiders that would take your face off as soon as look at you, but no one had anything but pity or contempt for an obvious vault dweller. They got better or they died, more commonly the latter, but they lost that suit pretty damn quick if they were smart. The girl - in her late teens or early twenties, he'd guess - didn't even have a weapon. Or any supplies at all. She was wild-eyed, battered, and already dehydrated, and looked up at him with mixed hope and terror.

"May I have some water, please?"

Simms liked polite people. He nodded, tipping his hat back to get a better look at her. "We have water to spare inside. And it's not even that irradiated. I got questions for an'body who comes in, though. For you, I'll keep it real simple until you've gotten that drink: what's your name?"

This was meant to be an easy one, but maybe the kid had been out in the sun for too long, because even this seemed to throw her. She stood there, blinking stupidly at him, mouth moving soundlessly.

He started opening the gate anyway, talking as he did so, using the same soothing tone that he would on a wounded brahmin. "Hey, if you're running from something or someone, now's a great time to start fresh. You can be whoever you want to be now. Choose a new name if you don't want your fellow vaulties to track you down, or if you can't stand the old one an'more."

"I was… I am… that is, I'll be… Amari. You don't think she'd mind, do you? Me stealing part of her name?" She was deadly serious, waiting earnestly for his response..

Having no idea what the girl was talking about, but inclined to be agreeable, Simms shook his head. "'Course she wouldn't. Amari. That's pretty. You got a surname to go with that?" She shook her head, face twisted like she wanted to cry, but lacked the moisture to shed tears. "'Kay, no matter. Welcome to Megaton."


	2. Condemned to be Free

" _You are to mend broken bones, prescribe medications, and see to the health of my residents. These experiments are a waste of time and a danger to us all!"_

" _Don't be a damned fool! You know nothing of the viruses and bacteria that survive out there! We experiment to prepare. We prepare to survive. Your wife-"_

" _Was doomed from the moment I let you and your brat in. If I had known that-"_

" _I'm sorry, Alphonse, truly, but she had no immune system. None of you do. You're delaying the inevitable by trying to keep this system closed. You're risking your descendants' lives by not taking the necessary steps now."_

" _This conversation is over, Wilder. No more experiments. No more inoculations. That's final."_

* * *

" _What would you do out there, anyway, Mari? Don't you think life would be hard - harder than it is in here?"_

" _I'll take 'hard' in exchange for freedom, Amata. If I get a chance, I'll practice medicine. If not, well - I'll do what I need to survive. I have skills, knowledge, ambition… those have to count for something, right? I can't imagine_ not _thriving wherever I end up. Is that stupid?"_

* * *

Back in the vault, Marilyn had dreamed of this life, but after a week on the outside, Amari - lonely, hungry, and sick - would have given almost anything to go back to what she knew. After two weeks, she fantasized about going back to the vault and pounding on the door until someone let her in - or shot her - but by then she was too weak to walk that far, and had been barred from leaving town by the man who now held her debt. After the third week, by that point stranded on a thin precipice between two abysses, she finally found it in herself to channel some of that Marilyn-like optimism and accept a risk with the hope it offered. Getting to that point wasn't easy, however, it and came close to costing her everything she had left.

The day Amari left home was the worst in her life, but it would also be the last day she felt completely well for a very long time as her body struggled to cope with the cesspool of diseases that Megaton was in comparison with the vault. Like her health, she didn't know what she had until it was gone. She would eventually take note of many such things taken for granted with wistfulness tinged with bitterness over what she'd lost: easy meals, hot showers, and a life free from bloodshed.

Lucas Simms was kind - and only later would she come to appreciate how unusual such generosity was in the wasteland - but his kindness and resources would only stretch so far for a disoriented stranger: a meal, a place to sleep (he and his son doubled up for the night, leaving her the child's room), and a bracing pep talk in the morning.

"What are you going to do, Amari? To make it out here, you need a job, a safe place to stay, and food to eat. Different clothes, too. I can only offer to help with one of those. My wife, Lenore, ran out on me 'n Hardin years ago. I kept a couple of the outfits she left behind, in case she came back… but I guess that's pretty dumb at this point. I'll trade them to you for that vault-suit."

"Trade?" Amari was still trying to catch up with her circumstances and felt intensely stupid this morning, all of her confidence gone. "This is… all I have."

"Nothin's free, hon. I'm tryin' to teach you that lesson as nicely as I can. I'm also tryin' to get you to lose that bright blue target on your back. Alright? You don't have to take the offer. Crazy Moira might take it off your hands. You never know with that one. But it's on the table."

"Okay. I'll think about it. Thank you." She was sitting in Simms' kitchen, nibbling cautiously at a lumpy something he'd called a "mutfruit," wondering when she was going to wake up from this nightmare.

"Welcome. Now, what are you good at? Can you shoot for shit? Because if'n you can scrape the caps together for a gun, there's always money in hunting. Molerats and dogs are our usual meat, but the Stahls will give you a bit of money for bloatflies and radroaches too. Mirelurks are prime eating, but you've gotta be brave or stupid to go after them alone."

She thought about afternoons spent down in the reactor level back when she was ten, pinging BBs off of targets with her best friend. The memory made her smile. She hadn't gotten very good - the Overseer had caught wind of what they were doing less than a week after that disastrous birthday party and had confiscated the weapon despite the girls' protests - but it had been fun while it lasted. Then she thought about the 10mm pistol she'd used and discarded the day before and her stomach clenched. Hand shaking, she set the fruit down on her plate. "No, I don't know how to shoot. I've been trained in medicine, though. I didn't get to finish, but I had a good start."

Simms looked uncomfortable. "We _have_ a doc. Church may be a petulant old sourpuss, but he's got experience to spare. I don't see him taking on an assistant neither. You can ask, but I don't know that that will go well. Two other options come to mind." Here he fiddled with his fork, drawing lines on the table with the tines, not meeting her eyes. "Colin Moriarty owns the bar up on the slope opposite. I'll point it out when I give you the tour in a little bit. He's always liable to hire girls, 'specially if they've got all their teeth and some looks. Gives 'em a bunk of their own and meals, too. I don't know how she manages it, but Lucy West lives on what she makes there _and_ sends money home to her family, too. I ain't saying I would send any daughter of mine to work for that man, but all the same that's… that's probably what you should do, at least until you've acclimated yourself a little bit. That look you've got in your eyes tells me you're still not all here, and I think you need some time to process whatever's happened. A lot of vaulties do. Except for that last one…"

Amari nodded absently, not tracking with everything he had said. Serving drinks didn't sound too bad. Work was work, she wasn't too proud for anything, and she'd be grateful for the chance to think through her long-term options. It'd give her a chance to learn this town and its people, and to earn enough money (or "caps") for some decent supplies. "Good idea. What's the other job, though?"

"Eh… Craz-... uh, Moira Brown, proprietor of the Craterside Supply, is always looking for research assistants. _Always._ None of them have lasted for more than a few months, even though the word is she pays them pretty well, and lets 'em sleep and eat on premises."

This sounded ominous. "Why, what happens to them? Why don't they stay?"

"I'm not sure about the details," Simms confessed. "Some just leave. Some leave after a shouting match with Moira. Some… kind of… disappear. The only one I know anything specific about was a Little Lamplighter. That is, a homeless teenager with no appreciable survival skills - sound familiar? I don't remember his name, but he stumbled into town a while back, hurt and starving. Moira hired him on the spot, got him fixed up and fed. But not a month later, he cussed her out in front of God 'n everybody, said he wasn't going to dance to her tune anymore, and left town."

"What didn't he want to do?"

Simms smiled. "Moira wanted him to get, and I quote, 'seriously irradiated for science.' You know, drink a quart of nuclear waste water and let it all sink in while she ran her tests. Apparently that was the last straw for this particular young man."

She recoiled in horror at the thought, and decided on the spot that she wouldn't be putting her fate into the hands of a mad scientist if she had any other options. "Alright, you've convinced me. I'll ask this Mr. Moriarty for a job." She forced herself to eat the last of the fruit and stood up, steeling her resolve for whatever came next. "I'm ready to see the town." Something he'd said finally sunk in. "What was that you said about that 'last one'? Did you see another vault-dweller yesterday - an older man with gray hair?" She couldn't keep the apprehension out of her voice. What if he was still here? What would they say to each other after everything that had happened?

"Yeah, briefly." Simms led the way outside and pointed to the well-worn area in front of the gate. "I was up here by the steps th' night before last, smoking and listening to the sounds of the town settle as everyone made their way home. Hardin had been in bed for hours, so I guess it was about ten or eleven. _I_ don't have a fancy vault-watch. The gate opened and Deputy Weld let in a stranger. That in itself was weird: he's programmed to call me or one of the other human guards to check out anybody new, but he didn't this time. It was an old man, like you said. Vault suit and all. But unlike you he had a pack, a gun, and a pretty determined look on his face. Gave me a name - James - and said he had business with Moriarty, and that he'd been to Megaton before."

"That's not possible," she protested, already scanning the people in the valley below looking for him. "He-... we were _all_ born in the vault. No one comes in. No one leaves. That's the way it's always been."

Simms gave her an amused look. "Well, _you_ left. _He_ left. And sure enough, Weld recognized him. He'd apparently been here before, long before my time. Who is he to you, kid? Your father?"

Amari didn't say anything. Part of her wanted to run out of the gate, away from any possible confrontation, and part of her wanted to seek him out and demand answers, heedless of how that would play out afterwards. Anger and grief faced off against a desperate need for explanations and left her silent.

He continued, a little puzzled. "Well, in any case, he's not here anymore. A few hours before you showed up yesterday, he passed me going the other way, now wearing a waster's garb. Looked like he could take care of himself. He _might_ have been a little hungover after chatting with Moriarty all night, but who am to say? He gave me a nod and he was gone. And that was it. Sorry I don't have more. Moriarty might be able to tell you where he was going."

Relief. Disappointment. She could defer that meeting for another day. "No matter. Let's see this town."

Megaton seemed _huge_ to the lifelong vault dweller, and not just in its sprawling, inefficient structures. Before yesterday, Vault 101 had housed 217 people (down from a peak population of 368 a century before); not counting itinerant traders and pilgrims seeking the Church of Atom, Megaton had perhaps half that number in permanent citizens. To eyes that had never seen a stranger, however, the sight of so many unknown people was overwhelming, as was the absence of the oppressive but familiar ceiling and walls. Amari had hardly noticed the world around her in her flight from the vault, but now the uncontained magnitude of it all pressed down on her and made her want to go back inside and never come out again. She'd seen pictures and videos of the world before the war, of course, and had understood on a cognitive level what that meant, but actually experiencing such… freedom was another thing entirely. She knew the word "agoraphobia" - it wasn't something that any of the dwellers had suffered from, but it had been in the psychology files - and hoped the fear would pass. Or at least stay at a level that she could handle. The list of things she now had to handle was growing at an alarming rate, and she tried to reframe the fear as "motivating," rather than "paralyzing." She _would_ make it. _Had_ to justify her unlikely survival somehow. If that meant achieving the "something important" that Marilyn had aspired to for her entire life, then so much the better. For now, however, Amari would be satisfied with the minimal goal of living out the week.

Sheriff Simms walked her by the general store, the clinic, the water treatment center, the Stahl's restaurant, and the Church of Atom (the purpose of which required an explanation that she only half-understood), and finally wished her luck and bid her farewell outside of Moriarty's saloon. He had stopped to introduce her to the people they passed, helpfully pointing out others at a distance, but all of these names passed in one ear and out the other. Focusing on details was becoming harder - her eyes hurt, her head ached, and she had a creeping sense of unreality which was aggravated by some of the things Simms had showed her: Megaton had an undetonated _bomb_ in its midst, which some of its residents _worshipped_ ; the walking corpse eating a meal at the market was a "ghoul" named Gob (and he was "good people"); and yes, radroaches were a poor man's protein around here. It was a lot to take in, and her capacity for new information was running short.

"Well, well… who do we have here?" Amari took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the lack of light before stepping up to the counter. It was dark, cavelike, and relatively cool inside the bar, which was deserted except for the smiling man, bearded behind the bar and a young woman with short, reddish hair asleep in a chair in an alcove to her right.

"Are you Colin Moriarty? My name is Amari. I'd like to discuss some things with you if you don't mind."

"Oh, I've already picked the buzz about you. It's all over town. James's little girl, all grown up and looking for a job and dear old Dad. In that order. You _are_ his, right? The name doesn't line up with what I remember, and I would have expected someone more... impressive. You're shaking. Pale."

She nodded shortly, and took an empty stool - her legs felt wobbly from nervousness. "Where did he say he was going?"

"You're going about this all wrong, my dear. We need to make a deal first. How are you going to pay for that information? And don't tell me a fancy vault education, because that ain't legal tender up here."

"I don't have any money yet, but I'd like to fix that by working for you. I can cook, clean, serve drinks - whatever you need. I don't plan to stay in Megaton for more than a month or so, just long enough to get my bearings."

He studied her for a long moment, then laughed, "Alright, my lovely new friend. For your father's sake, I'll take you on - on a temporary basis of course. I prefer long-term commitments, of course, so if you change your mind just let me know. Ha ha! Now, don't go anywhere. Let me draw you up a contract." He disappeared for a long time, long enough for Amari to wonder if he'd forgotten about her, then he finally came back with a grimy sheet of paper with nearly-illegible writing covering both sides.

"This is a standard contract spelling out that I'll pay you 28 caps every Friday (prorated for this short week, of course), plus room and board. Twelve hours on, twelve hours off, seven days a week. Fair enough, right? You can sign right here."

Sweat was trickling from her forehead now, and Amari wiped it out of her eyes and reached for the paper. "I'd like to read it before I sign, please."

"Sure, sure… take your time. How lucky I am to have a literate employee who knows her rights." He stood over her, arms crossed, tapping his foot with impatience.

She squinted at the writing, which seemed to tremble in time with her pulse and tumble off the paper. Oh, she was sick alright. Sick, or maybe poisoned by the air, the food, or the water in this town. A phrase from the midst of the jumble of chickenscratch jumped out at her: "What does this mean, Mr. Moriarty? 'Said employee may establish a line of credit not to exceed 500 caps, interest to be defined as…'"

"Oh, that's just a clause I put in there to give my girls a little bit of a safety net. If you wake up not feeling so well, or if you need a day off here and there, you can stay in bed without starving - I'll keep you fed and even haul the good doctor in to take a look at you." His voice was cajoling and pleasant, but a glance at his face revealed a knowing sneer.

"Ah… what happens at the 500 mark?" These details seemed important - the kind of important that one should ordinarily take the time to look over - but she was having trouble connecting one thought to the next. At this point, she felt that she would sell her soul just to get to the promised bed.

"Well, my dear, generosity has a limit. At that point, I'd insist on being repaid, one way or another. But you wouldn't need to worry about that, right? Clean-living girl like you, here for a short time, I'm sure you won't get to that point. It's the ones that take to drink or drug that have a problem. And you're too smart and honest to walk out on a debt. I'm not worried about taking a risk on _you_." He held out the pen to her imperiously. "Sign, and I'll kick Nova into showing you to your bunk. I think your short week is going to be shorter than we thought."

She signed. It would be the last significant thing she would do for a long time.

Hours after securing employment, she was delirious with fever, shivering under a dirty blanket, and incapable of specific concerns or plans. Waking or sleeping, apparitions haunted her, pursued her down dark avenues, accusing her of surviving - and being unworthy of it. Scenes from real life alternated and blended with visions of things that had never happened as she dreamed the days away.

* * *

 _She was twelve and Butch was sitting behind her, snapping her bra straps. She called him out on it and he stabbed her in the throat with his pencil. Then-_

* * *

 _She was five and was lost in the service tunnels, separated from her friend. After wandering for hours, she found her body - but not before the swarming radroaches had eaten her face. Then-_

* * *

 _She was sixteen, taking the GOAT again, but her pencil wasn't working. No matter what she wrote, the answer was the same. She blinked. There was only one option on each question, and only ever had been the one. Then-_

* * *

 _She was in the clinic, alone, when Andy started bringing in bodies, carrying them in his sharp-edged claws. Officer Wolfe. Officer Park. Tom and Mary Holden, that young couple caught in the Atrium crossfire. Jonas. Old Lady Palmer. She knew she had to fix them, but only had a scapel and couldn't do anything but add to their wounds. She ran, but met her father at the door, who told her, scowling, that she didn't belong there anymore. She jammed the scalpel into his chest, and kept running through an empty vault, looking for any living, sympathetic person, but finding no one._

* * *

The dreaming went on and on, and it was only gradually that she became aware of some of the real people around her. Different hands brought her water, some soft, some rough. People talked amongst themselves about her in low tones and tried to shush her when she screamed. The room shimmered with light and color when she tried to open her eyes, and made her nauseous with its habit of spinning around her, and so she kept them closed. Moriarty's oily voice cut through the buzz and chatter from time to time. One time upon her waking to near-lucidity, he seemed irritable, even angry over something. Amari felt guilty. She was taking advantage of his hospitality and wasn't working. She tried to get up, but someone held her down and made her swallow a bitter, grainy drink. She slept instead, a mercifully dreamless stretch of nothing.

At the end of the nothing, she woke to an empty room, dusty air limned with sunlight from the one little window. Her bedding was damp from sweat and smelled of urine and vomit. Her head hurt and her mouth felt like a bone-dry sponge. There was a bottle beside her bunk on the floor, half full of what she hoped was water. It was stale and tasted like metal, but it unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth and woke her up a little. Even this slight effort exahusted her, however, and she rolled back to recoup her energy, holding her left wrist up to poke listlessly at her Pip-Boy, checking her own vitals.

The device, no great shakes as a diagnostic tool, had several less-than-helpful warnings flashing. Her temperature was a few degrees above normal, but she suspected that was an improvement over what it had been. She needed more water - no surprises there - and food, although that didn't sound that appealing at the moment. She navigated languidly over to the date and time to see how long she'd been asleep and gasped out loud. Oh no. Oh _hell_ no. Four days. She'd left the vault on the Sunday eaten breakfast with Simms on a Monday, and now it was Friday morning. How much did she owe after four days of idleness? She realized for the first time that she had no clear idea how much credit 500 caps really was. Or how much wealth 28 caps a week represented.

A few minutes more of rest, and she sat up, navigating a wobbly line to an item she identified (hopefully correctly) as a chamber pot, then mustered up the effort to try the door. It opened onto a short hallway, which led back to the bar where she had met her new employer. Either the plank floor was incredibly unstable or she was, and she had to lean on the wall to stay upright. There was someone behind the counter, but it wasn't Moriarty.

It-... he spoke up with a gravelly voice. "Smoothskin. You're awake. Have a seat. Moriarty wants you alive, so I'll feed you."

She edged onto the closest stool, not taking her eyes off of him. Simms had pointed him out at a distance, but up close it was _much_ worse: skin the scabbed texture of a serious burn victim, oozing fluids between the cracks, yellow-white _skull_ peeking through the scalp on his hairless head. "Hi, um…"

"Gob." He handed her a mug of water and a bowl of something that looked like dirty water with a pool of grease on top. "You're a vaultie. That means you probably don't know what ghouls are. I'll save you some time: ghouls are the people you can treat like crap without repercussions, on account of the fact we're not really human anymore."

"Thank you," she whispered. "What happened to you?"

"Radiation happened. Lots of radiation. Usually it kills, but sometimes it just changes a person into this. We do live longer - there are ghouls that have been alive since before the war - but I'm only about forty. I've been a slave for most of that time."

"To Moriarty?" She drank the water thirstily and sipped cautiously at the "soup." It was lukewarm, and barely flavorful enough to count as broth, but it was probably all her stomach could handle at the moment. She tried not to gag when she thought about the hands that had probably prepared it.

"He bought me from slavers fifteen years ago. Said he was 'freeing' me, but really he just made me his property instead. I'm still trying to work off that debt. Kid, you really don't want to owe money to Colin Moriarty."

"I already do."

He looked sad. At least she thought he did - it was hard to tell without lips to form an expression. "I know. Just… get back on your feet and don't add to it more than you have to for any reason, okay? And please… don't tell him I was talking to you, okay? He's beaten me for less."

She finished the broth, hoping it would stay down, and asked, "Why don't you leave?" The door opened behind her and Gob turned away immediately, wiping randomly at a spot on the opposite end of the bar.

"Well, if it isn't my newest, laziest lass. Shall we look at the numbers?" He stepped behind the bar, cuffing Gob idly as he passed, and pulled a little book out of his pocket. "Let's see… four days room and board, with a discount on account of you weren't eating much, the tender care of my employees, not one but _two_ house calls from Church…" He looked up, smiling, "Sunk costs and all that, right m' dear? Couldn't let you croak after investing so much in you." He scribbled something with the stub of a pencil. "With accrued interest, you owe me… 148 caps. Assuming you need at least another full day before you're any good to me at all, that'll start you off at 160 in the hole at the start of your first week."

Amari swallowed her dismay. It would take - she did some quick figuring - almost six weeks to earn that much, and that was without the ominous and unexpected influence of "accrued interest." Well, she would do her best to pay it off, and spend her free time learning about the town in the interim. When she was stronger, she would look for other ways to earn money.

"Alright. I'll get to work tomorrow. Thank you for the help."

He laughed heartily at this. "I don't hear that last line very much. But you're welcome. Anything for the daughter of a friend."

Her chin dipped involuntarily to her chest. She was tired already and needed to sleep. But she needed to ask a question first. "Simms said that Ja-… my dad… had been here before. That he knew you. How can that be? No one leaves the vault."

"Is that what your father told you? That you were born in that hole? That _he_ was born there as well? Oh, the lies we tell to those we love. Yes, I've gotten an earful about the brainwashing that goes on in there: 'All hail the Overseer! We're born in the Vault, we die in the Vault!' And all that other assorted lunacy." He stopped to light a cigarette, relishing her look of shock. "Kid, your father brought you to the Vault right after you were born. To keep you safe, you see. I remember it well; you stayed in my saloon, after all. That's right. Your father, his Brotherhood of Steel friend, and you, the suckling babe with nary a tit to suckle. Sorry about your mum. Truly. But, life goes on. Daddy lied. Life's full of little disappointments. And now you're all grown up, and wondering where he's gone to… oh yes, I have an idea. But I don't let that information go for free, least of all to someone who owes me money. Ask me when you're free and clear and I'll tell you what I know."

Five minutes later, once more lying on the filthy bed and alone with her thoughts, Amari dug in her vault-suit pocket for the as-yet-unplayed holodisc she'd carried with her as her sole memento from the vault, for reasons she hadn't understood at the time. Almost anything would have been better: food, medicine, a weapon. Depressed and more confused than before, she didn't really expect the tape to have anything more than Jonas' to-do list or perhaps his most recent research notes, but it would be nice to hear a familiar voice. And it _was_ familiar, but it wasn't the one she expected:

 **" _Hold on Jonas, I need to record this first._**

 ** _I don't really know how to tell you this. I hope you'll understand, but I know you might be angry. I thought about it for a long time, but in the end I decided it was best for you not to know. So many things could have gone wrong, and there's really no telling how the Overseer will react when he finds out. It's best if he can blame everything on me. Obviously, you already know that I'm gone. It was something I needed to do. You're an adult now. You're ready to be on your own. Maybe some day, things will change and we can see each other again. I can't tell you why I left or where I'm going. I don't want you to follow me. God knows life in the Vault isn't perfect, but at least you'll be safe. Just knowing that will be enough to keep me going."_**

 **" _Don't mean to rush you, Doc, but I'd feel better if we got this over with."_**

By the time the new voice - poor, dead Jonas' - interrupted to urge the doctor to hurry, she was crying bitter tears over the absurdity of it all. Could he not have anticipated these consequences? _She_ could have told him that this was never going to end well for anybody close to him. Not for the vault as a whole either, which would currently be reeling from the Overseer's overreaction. _Not that he would care about that if he had his own mission in mind_ , a nasty voice muttered in her mind. The memory of dozens of ill-advised (and harshly-punished) essays flashed through her mind and she noted grimly that there was a family resemblance there.

 **" _Okay. Go ahead, Jonas. Goodbye, sweetheart. I love you."_**

Destroying the tape would express her current feelings perfectly, but that would take a fair amount of effort. Those tapes were durable and she didn't want to get up to smash it. Instead, she played it over, again and again, replaying it until she fell back into a troubled dream in which she spent hours struggling to climb out of a hole, only to fall into a new one.


	3. Moira

" _What is it you wanted to show me, Mari? Is that... a radroach egg? You know those things are dangerous!"_

" _Shh, not so loud, Amata. Dad will hear. Yeah, I found it behind a grate that I pried open. I'm going to incubate it in this box and see if I can tame it."_

" _I don't think you can tame an insect..."_

" _Show me where it says that in a reliable book and I'll destroy this thing like we're supposed to. Until then, help me feed it. Please?"_

* * *

" _Many men would take the death-sentence without a whimper to escape the life-sentence which Fate carries in her other hand." - T. E. Lawrence_

* * *

More than two weeks had passed since Amari had first crawled out of bed in Moriarty's bunkhouse. In all that time, she hadn't been well enough to work for more than two full days in a row, as her body was steadily running through a painful gamut of symptoms, most of which she'd only read about in medical texts. Everything she ate or drank, including the meals that Gob so kindly prepared, had as well have been poison to her: gastrointestinal problems started almost immediately after she started eating the saloon food, soon after which her respiratory system decided to join the fight, a combination that almost killed her again. She supposed with dismayed detachment that the petri dish that her body had become would have been an interesting case for some academically-inclined pathologist to study (with gloves and a mask or from behind glass), but as a personal experience it was pretty shitty. Literally and figuratively.

The first chance she got, she forfeited the vault-suit to Simms, accepting his ex-wife's clothes with gratitude. Having belonged to a well-fed woman who'd had a child, they were too big (and hung more loosely as the days went on), but they helped her to stand out less in a sea of drab colors and rough, durable fabrics. Her eyes were sensitive to the sunlight and she wished she could buy a hat or some sunglasses, but the totality of her first week's wages (excepting three caps for an in-house laundry service) went straight back to Moriarty - and the debt still crept up, slowly but surely, as he reminded her with an unpleasant smile every evening. With no money to spend and no energy to waste on exploration, it wasn't until early September that she first stepped into the Craterside Supply and met Moira Brown for herself.

Every person she'd ever talked to about the general store owner had taken pains to draw attention to the woman's instability, some with affection, some with scorn, and a few with outright fear. They shopped there, of course, as there was no other option for most wares, but that didn't mean that they liked or respected her. The bare facts of the matter indicated that Moira, then about twenty-five or thirty years old, had come into town eight years previously, with three brahmin-loads of merchandise and enough caps to establish herself as a merchant. Beyond the surety of that entrance, there was a lot of speculation about her identity. Everyone agreed that they'd seen people coming and going from the back door of her place at night, but no man or woman would admit to visiting her on the sly, not even to tell tales. Her treatment of her assistants was well-known: Amari heard again the story that Simms had told her about the boy who feared radiation poisoning, with added color and details. To this was added an account of a woman Moira had allegedly sent to her death in a minefield far to the north (who had, at any rate, never returned to town), and another who only survived her last errand long enough to tell her employer to go to hell before dying of her injuries. Though by then Amari had grown to hate Moriarty as much as she'd hated anybody before, she still didn't know if Moira would have been any better; if he was cruel, at least he was sane.

With these stories dogging her steps, it was with some trepidation that she began the walk from the saloon down to the store, carrying the crate containing Moira's bimonthly order of alcohol. Unlike everybody else, Moira never joined the population of Megaton at the bar or at the Brass Lantern down below, but she apparently liked a drink as much as the next person. And the people of this town really liked their alcohol.

One of the perks enjoyed by Moriarty's employees was a ration of free liquor: three drinks a day for the women and one for Gob. It wasn't mandatory - Nova usually declined or took it easy as it combined badly with her drug habit - but, as Lucy pointed out, what else are you going to do? Amari didn't think she could handle the alcohol physically right now, and had turned it down up to this point; it was tempting, however, as the habitual drinkers at least seemed happy (for a few hours, anyway) when they were drinking. It brought back the painful memory of that last real conversation on the reactor level, however - only six weeks gone now, but felt like a lifetime ago - and she couldn't bring herself to take even a single sip. Forgetting, even temporarily, would be a relief, but she also felt that it would be a kind of betrayal. She deserved to experience this pain.

The route down to Moira's was an annoying exercise in roundabout pathfinding: down one ramp, and up another, and repeat. Still weak from whatever amoeba she'd picked up from the drinking water before she learned to boil it every time, Amari had to stop and rest several times. It didn't help that she couldn't breathe through her nose at all, or that her lungs felt like they were underwater. Rounding one corner too quickly, she slipped on a puddle left by one of the leaky pipes and almost dropped the crate in the fall, which would have put her another sixty caps or so in the hole. Which might have been Moriarty's goal in sending her instead of Gob in the first place, come to think of it. She hugged the box to herself and stood up again, legs trembling at even this small effort. She thought she was becoming feverish again, but didn't bother checking. Either she would be able to get up in the morning or she wouldn't. It didn't really matter.

With every passing day, Moriarty had more of a claim on her, and escape seemed more and more out of reach. She'd woken up an hour before her shift the day before, and walked slowly around the edge of town to the entrance - she wasn't planning on going anywhere, but just wanted to see what the world outside looked like when she wasn't running for her life. Deputy Weld, the protectron with a stupid hat who guarded the gate, wouldn't let her pass through, citing "restriction of movement on account of debt." When she'd gone to him, indignant, Simms had been sympathetic, but ultimately unhelpful. Moriarty had that right, he said. It was a clause in all of his contracts… hadn't she read it?

It was now six o'clock on a Monday (September 3rd, if the Pip-Boy was to be believed) and she was fucked. Amari saw with crystalline clarity the way the coming weeks and months would go - she'd continue riding this see-saw of illnesses for awhile (God, hopefully there was a light at the end of _that_ tunnel), by the time she could breathe clearly again, she'd be a all but a slave, and at some point - that ominous 500 mark, perhaps - Moriarty would press her into some worse duty than mopping. Nova had begun that way, she knew now: whether the prostitution had begun as a means of paying for the jet, or whether the jet had begun as a way to cope with the prostitution, the two big problems in Nova's life now propped each other up, as confining as any cage. Lucy West had kept her head above water for the two years she'd been there, but Lucy had Billy Creel to advocate for her: she stayed most nights with him, helping with his adopted daughter Maggie, and in return he helped her "a bit." How much, she didn't say, but it was telling that she usually managed to send a little bag of caps home to Arefu when there was a caravan going that way. She had a young brother, she said; raider forays on the town left her family hungry sometimes. Amari didn't have a Billy Creel in her life, didn't really want one to be honest, but in any case she wasn't likely to strike such an arrangement as long as she had snot streaming from both nostrils all the time, not to mention a well-deserved reputation for vomiting at the slightest provocation.

Coming back to herself - she'd been drifting for a minute, standing still in front of the Craterside Supply - she roused herself and knocked, before remembering that it was a shop and letting herself in. It was dark enough inside that it took a minute to adjust her eyes. A pleasant, sing-song voice caught her before she could step in very far. "Don't step on the plants!"

It was a fair warning, and one that she suspected the owner of the voice had had to issue more than once, if this was her usual arrangement: there were dozens of seedlings growing in tin cans, arranged in concentric circles on the floor around a large radio, which was tuned to the classical music station. There was only a narrow walkway of unoccupied space at the edge of the room and Amari edged her way around to the counter and set the box down there before sitting down abruptly against the wall, utterly exhausted.

Eyes closed, she called out, "I know you have credit to spare with him, but I still need a receipt, please."

"Just a moment. The plants are almost done listening to their music."

When she was done - that is, when the stopwatch beside her signaled the end of some predetermined interval - she stood up, turned the radio off, and carefully picked her way over to the counter to examine the delivery. "You're that vault-dweller. I've been hoping you'd come to see me soon. Would you like a bottle of water while you wait?"

She was always thirsty. "If it's clean. I have problems…"

"Sure, sure. I used to be the same way when I first got to Megaton. Not _quite_ as bad as you, of course; you're something special! But I still filter and boil everything, so you should be fine with this." She handed the water down and went back to shuffling through her drawers, presumably looking for writing materials. "Would you let me take samples? For science?"

Amari choked on the water and coughed. "Samples?"

"Oh, you know… blood, hair, saliva, mucus, sweat, urine, stool, marrow, bile, semen, skin… the works. What our environment is doing to you is fascinating. I'd like to study your cells." Receipt forgotten already, Moira was holding up a syringe with a very thick needle, a euphoric expression on her face.

Amari was afraid of the dubiously-sterile needle. She was also afraid of Moira. With her hair hanging in loose hanks around her face and a wild glint in her eye, she looked like the kind of crazy who might just stab first and ask questions later. "Some of those things are fairly invasive. And semen? I'm a woman. I don't mind a cheek swab and I'll yank a hair for you - it's falling out anyway - but I don't have time for a full panel. Please just write the receipt so I can go back to work."

She looked disappointed, but didn't press the issue. She wrote the receipt, grabbed a sample of the more accessible things, and pulled Amari to her feet - a superficially helpful gesture meant to steal herself a look at the Pip-Boy on her wrist. Irritated and alarmed, Amari pulled her arm away and staggered toward the exit, accidentally kicking over one of the cans filled with the dirt on the way, snapping the tender stalk in half.

A muscle in Moira's face twitched, but she stayed calm. "Oooh… don't worry, dear. I'll clean that up in a minute. Would you sell me that Pip-Boy? I've always wanted one. I _had_ one, once… two, actually. But they both broke."

Like the other residents of Vault 101, Amari had long ago ceased to consider the device on her wrist as separate from her body. This model wasn't meant to be removed and they weren't at all easy to separate from a living person, even if they were willing. Even as desperate as her circumstances had become, she'd never once even considered selling it. She was going to explain all this, but when she opened her mouth, what came out instead was, "How much?"

"120 caps."

That would reduce her debt greatly, but might not be enough to get out of the hole. And she'd lose something extremely valuable to her, the only significant thing left from her life before. "No, thank you. It's pretty hard to take off, anyway."

"I can manage that part without hurting you much." Moira now sounded confident. "I've done it before. What about 120 caps… plus a cash advance for two weeks' work? I pay my assistants fifty caps a week. You would have no obligation to stay beyond that point; _I_ won't nickel-and-dime you to death. I promise."

Amari stared at the woman. How did she know? 220 was _exactly_ what she owed Moriarty as of the evening's tally. She could work for two weeks for this madwoman and be _free_. Less some blood, marrow, and bile, probably, but _free_. The voices in her head - ghosts or echoes of ghosts - clamored for a say in her answer: Marilyn's was a strong, clear, and confident "Yes!" but this was immediately followed by Amata's ever-fearful "No." Amari needed time to think, and she _really_ needed to get back to the saloon before it got busy for the night. Out loud, she answered only, "Maybe." Moira turned her focus back to her plants as if she was no longer interested in the conversation and Amari left her to it.

By the time she'd stumbled through the rest of her duties for the night, clumsily smashing a glass she was washing when her concentration wavered, she knew her answer: whatever "Crazy Moira" would do to her in the next two weeks, even if it killed her, it couldn't be worse than a lifetime of service to Moriarty. The Pip-Boy wouldn't help her if she never got to leave this town; it wouldn't help her if she became one of the walking dead like Nova, or a whipped dog like Gob. She went to sleep feeling ill, but happy all the same, for the first time in weeks.

Getting out of bed the next morning was hard. Getting to the store required a heroic amount of effort, and once she nearly pitched over a low railing some thirty feet off the ground. Too late, she realized that she ought to have asked Gob or Lucy for help; they were the closest she had to friends here, and they would have helped if she'd explained what she needed to do. She made it in the end, however. Sitting primly behind her counter, Moira was sedately entering numbers into an adding machine; her plants - whatever _that_ was about - were nowhere to be seen.

She crossed the room and leaned on the counter, panting. "Yes, yes, yes, okay? I want to sell my Pip-Boy to you. You can cut my hand off if you have to. I'll work for you. I'll get irradiated. I'll get blown up. I'll do anything. Just, please, give me the money so I can throw it in his face."

She looked up with a triumphant grin. "You're pretty sick, aintcha? I can't wait to document that. And, lest you think I'm just going to observe, don't worry! I have some treatments I've been meaning to test out. Alright. Let me get my money box and we'll get you sprung loose." She briskly poured the entire contents of the box into a bag and set it gingerly on her caps scale, a necessary fixture on every shopkeeper's counter. "223. That's all the cash on hand I have… and he's gonna want cash. C'mon, vaultie, there's no time to waste. What's your name, anyway?"

Moira dragged her as far as the saloon, but stopped outside the door, a little embarrassed. "I'm not allowed in there. There was an… incident a few years ago. Anyway, just hand it over and come out. I'll wait out here. Oh, and one more thing: _get the damned contract in your hands before you leave_. Good luck!"

Inside, in the dark, all the usual characters had taken their places, waiting for the lunch hour so they could open for business: Gob banging on the radio, trying to coax it into working for Three Dog's morning show. Moriarty smoking moodily at his favorite stool. Nova asleep in her usual chair. Billy Creel - an occasional interloper who didn't drink anything stronger than Nuka cola - conversing in low tones with Lucy off to the side. Good. Witnesses were good.

"I'm ready to pay off my contract, Moriarty." Had she said that out loud? Yes. He was looking up, surprised. It was nice to see him caught off his guard. "220, right? That's what you said last night. I have it here." She set it on the scale, adjusting for the usual tare weight of the bag. Sure enough, it read true: 223. Even Moriarty wouldn't cheat with his scales. The people would tear him apart for that.

"Ah, a few too many. Well, take it as a bonus. A thank you. I'd like that contract now." She needed to get out of here before she collapsed. She had the idea that she'd wake up a week later, still in his clutches if she did that.

He was angry now, and it terrified her to see this naked emotion in him: she'd seen him peeved, irritable, and belligerent, but never _angry_. He squeezed his glass so hard that she was surprised it didn't break, then relaxed and smiled.

"You're forgetting the interest, love. That's ten caps since last night. You got another seven on you? Maybe you should defer this whole business until you're feeling better, how about that? I'll call Church again, and you'll be fine in a day or two."

"No." She shook her head. "I… no. I'm done working for you. I'll get you another seven once I've put in my time with Moira. You can't hold me over seven caps. It's in the contract."

His voice grew soft and dangerous. "I can hold you whenever I want, because in this bar, in this _town_ , I am king. And _you_ are my subject."

"Hey." A new voice, cracked and cowed. Gob had crept away to the sleeping quarters and returned without anyone noticing. "Amari. Here's your winnings from last night." He held out a handful of caps to her. "Did you forget that you beat me at... cards? I told you I'd be good for it."

She took it uncomprehendingly, suddenly terrified for Gob, and of the way Moriarty was looking at him right now, and added it to the scale. 230.

Moriarty stood up, a tightly-wound ball of rage, and advanced on her. His face was inches from hers now. "You broke a glass last night. That costs three caps. And since Gob's _not fucking allowed_ to own property, he'd better not produce any more 'winnings' for you." The ghoul shrank back away from him and slumped behind the bar again, terrified and defeated.

Billy Creel, who'd been following this entire exchange, tapped the man politely on one shoulder. He was a solid-enough sort, and had a couple of inches on Moriarty, but if it came to fists or knives he wouldn't have a prayer. Moriarty was tough and wiry, fast despite his age. He also had two working eyes. Despite all this, Creel was smiling, "Hey, man. I'm going to lend this little lady a few caps and I'd be much obliged if you'd let her go. Deal? Enough is enough. You've lost this one. Or, rather, you've only profited a little bit. It's not the end of the world. Let her go. She's paid her debt." He carefully placed three more caps beside the purse and stepped back. Lucy's eyes were wide and she clutched her boyfriend's arm, pulling him back and watching her boss warily.

Amari nodded gratefully at him and tried to smile at Gob, who wasn't looking at anything but the glass he was cleaning. She held out her hand. "Contract."

Moriarty pulled it from his ledger and forfeited the page to her, leaning forward to whisper as he did so, "You're going to pay for this. They all will in time. No one crosses _me_."

* * *

Life as Moira's guinea pig had its ups and downs, but it was worlds better than what Amari had left behind. Unlike the back room in the saloon, it was clean and fairly quiet (except for Moira's never-ending stream of chatter). She removed the Pip-Boy on that first day, and without amputating anything; once gone, there was was only an inflamed patch of skin and the lingering feeling of having relinquished something precious. She wasted no time in taking all of the samples she'd asked for and more, but went out of her way to avoid causing pain; thanks for whatever numbing agent the woman used, Amari didn't even feel the effects of the marrow biopsy until hours later, and by then it was merely sore. Moira was not a doctor - even after a week, Amari wasn't sure _what_ she was, exactly, as her areas of interest and depth of knowledge varied widely - but she did have a working knowledge of sterilization techniques and germ theory, as well as a general idea of how the human body worked. In Moira's house, the food and drink were bland and boring (cookery being the one science that utterly escaped her), but it was safe to eat.

That first day, after being poked and prodded for an hour, Amari slept until evening, waking up to the sound of her new employer playing music for her seedlings once more on the floor below. After an uncertain amount of time, this sound ceased, and was replaced by the tread of Moira climbing stairs to carry flats of plants back up to the roof. This took several trips and before she finished Amari had fallen asleep again, only to wake up to find Moira sitting in a chair beside the bed, writing in a notebook and tapping her foot impatiently.

"Oh goody, you're awake. Now, if you don't mind, could you tell me about life in the vault?"

For as long as she was bedridden - that is, another full day after the first - Moira made it clear that she intended to get her money's worth in the meantime by asking questions, since she could realistically ask for nothing else. Zeroing in on aspects of vault life that Amari had never even _thought_ to consider, Moira somehow extracted more information than she'd even known she possessed, forcing her to think deliberately about things that she'd taken for granted her entire life. Lying awake at night, throat sore from talking for hours, she kept on thinking, _Why_ are _personal decorations discouraged in the vault? Why_ do _we still all dress the same? Is it necessary to be alike to be equal?_ She laughed silently in the dark, thinking about the kind of essay that subject would have made, which in turn made her think about how the vault residents would respond to an agent of chaos like Moira in their midst. This thought made her depressed, and her smile faded. The answer to that was that the vault had never produced any full-fledged Moiras and never could. The consequences for being different were too harsh.

Moira was strange. Moira thought outside of the box. No, she didn't even know the box was there or that there _should_ rightfully be a boundary to limit her more ridiculous ideas. The thing with the plants only scratched the surface. On her first evening out of bed, sharing dinner with her new employer, she finally got up the courage to ask the woman a question of her own.

"Why _do_ you play music for those corn plants every day?"

Moira set down her spoon and looked up with a gratified expression. "I'm glad you finally asked! I thought you were horribly incurious and it was disappointing. To answer your question, I'm testing to see whether being exposed to an hour of music each day will have any effect on their growth."

"How will you know? What are you comparing them to?"

"The control group stays on the roof when I bring the others down. I measure both every other day."

"Oh." Amari ate a few bites of the bland mush, thankful that she could actually keep something down. There were a lot of follow-up questions to be asked and she selected one of these at random. "Don't the music ones get deprived of some sunlight if you bring them in here for an hour? Wouldn't that influence the results of your experiment?"

"That's an excellent observation, Amari." The woman beamed at her as if she were commending a good student. "But I thought of that - by late evening, there's not much sun reaching down into the crater at all, so they're not missing out on much. See?"

"Is there anything that makes you think that plants can respond to music at all?"

"I had no resource to convince me that it's _not_ possible, and that was enough for me to try it." She sighed and looked down, pale gray eyes going dull. "I am, however, about ready to conclude that there's no significant effect at all. I originally planned to run this experiment for two weeks, starting at the first sign of germination. That gives me one more day. Then the plants go out to one of the farmers on the rim. They pay me a bit for things like that, in the form of a part of the harvest, so a failed experiment isn't totally wasted. But I suppose you think this is all a bit silly?"

By Moira's standards, this actually made perfect sense and Amari was willing to give credit where credit was due. "No, no… it's admirable. I admit I'm skeptical and never would have thought to try something like that, but someone needs to, I suppose. If there's no record of another person doing a similar experiment, that is."

This did not have the intended effect of cheering her up. Quite the contrary, her shoulders slumped and her frown deepened. "The experiment has certainly _been_ done, under better conditions, along with a million other experiments that people like me have to stumble our way into, one at a time. _That's_ why I need the library archives. So I don't have to reinvent the wheel!"

Taken aback by the vehemence in this statement, Amari tried to be calming. "So, where's the library?" As far as jobs were concerned, this sounded better than visiting a minefield. Maybe she could go there someday.

Moira dismissed the question with a irritable wave. "Irrelevant. I can't send you. If Esme couldn't make it, then there's no way _you_ could. _She_ was tough and capable. And it's pretty far, anyway."

Amari could hardly claim to be either tough or capable at the moment, and was relieved - if a little disappointed - that she wouldn't be going there after all. "Esme was one of your former assistants?"

"She was," Moira answered shortly, mood darkening further, and Amari didn't press the issue.

There was something wrong with Moira. She could come off of a week of being energetic and happy and slip into a sluggish, depressed state in the space of hours. After living with her for a while, Amari learned to recognize the danger signs and tiptoe around her when things were going south. Anything could set her off at that point, from a small setback in her work to a rude customer, and she would lash out at anybody who was near. And for now, that person was mostly Amari.

It never came to physical attacks, and she could handle verbal abuse just fine. After weeks of being at Moriarty's beck and call, she was used to it, and at least believed that Moira didn't really mean it and couldn't really help it anyway. Her main concern was that Moira's irrational anger not lead to her being cast out into the cold before she was ready for independence. There was also the fact that she owed the woman a debt, and genuinely wanted to repay it, however she could; for now, that meant putting up with some harsh words (including a few undeserved accusations thrown in, here and there) and picking up the slack to make Moira's life continue working when the woman herself was not. After overcoming a lack of experience and slowly regaining some stamina, Amari learned to run the shop by herself, cook the meals, make the deliveries, and even tend to Moira's neglected experiments. She didn't believe for a moment that there was a secret code to be discovered in Three Dog's rambling addresses, but she did her best to transcribe them on the terminal for Moira's eventual perusal. Following Moira's scribbled instructions, she started a new crop of plants - they were now testing to see if animal blood, mostly collected from a recent brahmin butchering, had an enriching effect on the soil, which actually seemed relatively plausible. She only had to continue these marching orders and wait. The "real" Moira - or at least the one she preferred, the one who was chirpy and bright and erratic - would eventually come back, and they'd continue the work together. This arrangement worked, for now; two weeks came and went, and neither of them said anything about Amari leaving. Moira remembered to pay her at the end of that third week, and Amari was finally able to repay Billy Creel for his kindness. She tried to repay Gob as well, but he ran away from her, terrified of being caught talking to her; his employer had worked him over brutally for daring to help her, and it was weeks before he could be spotted without his arm in a sling. In the end, Amari paid Hardin a cap to take it to him, hoping the ghoul would at least get some benefit from his coin. Otherwise, she stayed well clear of Moriarty and everybody connected to him. It was safer for all of them that way, though she didn't think for a moment that he had forgotten about her.

It was as Moira's assistant that Amari truly became a part of Megaton for the first time, and got to know its people. When she'd been working in the saloon, she'd been relegated to the behind-the-scenes tasks, as no one wanted a visibly sick person anywhere near their food or drink; consequently, she had met almost no one for her first few weeks in town. Now, however, they came, even if it was just to drop a few caps on some random thing or another. They were curious about the newcomer who'd wriggled away from Moriarty, and had questions about life in the vault as well, though not so many as Moira. They also wanted to know how long she was staying, and this was a hard question for Amari to answer, even to herself.

"As soon as I can, I'm going to look for my father. That's my goal." This is what she told Moriarty, Simms, Moira, and everybody else who asked. If you tell a lie enough times, they say that you begin to believe it; this axiom never quite became true for Amari, although after a while it didn't feel like a lie, exactly. She _would_ eventually find James - owed him that much at least - but she wasn't in any hurry to do so, and wasn't yet even close to being able to survive beyond the walls on her own. And until then, his presence out there, somewhere - Moriarty had never said where and wasn't likely to now - made her a person with a family, someone with a mission and a direction in life instead of a fugitive running from home. And so the lie served several functions at once, not least to build a wall around her own guilt, and no one questioned it. No one, that is, except for Moira's friend from Boston.

Moira _had_ no friends. This was what Amari had believed. For the first month of her employment there, no one came to visit her except for business-related reasons. No one lingered to chat when it was Moira manning the counter, possibly afraid that she'd poison them with the proffered drink of water or drive them mad with her chatter. She couldn't blame them, exactly; she wouldn't quite put it past Moira to test a new substance on an unsuspecting person, and half-suspected that she'd done just that to Amari herself on at least one occasion. What it came down to was that she wasn't the kind of person that people wanted to try to understand, and for this Amari pitied her. That's why she was surprised when she heard voices on the floor below late one night - she'd been lying in bed, trying to learn useful things from one of Moira's chemistry textbooks, when she overheard Moira's high laugh and an answering male voice.

She padded downstairs barefoot, curious but not alarmed, and was amazed to find three people sitting around the tiny kitchen table, all drinking, all talking at the same time: Moira, of course, cheeks flushed red from whiskey, a dark-skinned man in blue overalls who jumped when he spotted Amari on the threshold, and a second man, completely bald and so pale he almost glowed, wearing dark sunglasses (inside, at night!).

Moira noticed her and let out a squeal of delight, "Yes! We have a fourth for bridge now, boys. Have a seat. Pull up a drink. "This is Thomas Weatherby," here she pointed to the man in overalls, "and this is Dea-... oh, what's your name today? That's right. Johnny D. This is my lovely assistant, Amari, may she never get the plague."

"Johnny" nodded to Amari before turning with a frown back to the table. "I don't know _how_ to play bridge, Moira. I'd bet my bottom dollar that Tom doesn't either. And I thought we were going to discuss… business? Does Amari know anything?"

"She knows a great many things, D-... Johnny. But nothing about us, no. However, it would be rude to send her away now. I thought we could play a game, just for a little while. I don't know how to play either, but I found some instructions in an old dutch oven the other day." She beamed around at them all. Manic Moira was hard to turn down. Her excitement was that infectious. And so they played bridge, or tried to anyway.

Wondering if she'd slipped into a surreal dream, Amari struggled to keep up, sipping a warm Nuka cola as she stared at the cards in her hand. She had never played cards at all - the vault hadn't had any for some reason - and had to learn the meaning of the symbols before they could get any further. Not that it really helped. Moira's on-the-fly interpretation of the rules she held in one hand was severely inhibited by her drunken state, and for the most part Amari and her partner, Johnny, simply exchanged confused looks over their hands as they struggled through a few hands in which there was no clear winner, resolution, or winning strategy. She was about to offer to go to bed, to let them get on with their "business" in her absence, when Tom derailed the game himself by bursting into tears, covering his face with his hands. Johnny moved toward him, slowly and uncertainly, while Amari looked away, unsure of what to do. Moira didn't hesitate, however, but went straight over to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and leading him out of the room, murmuring comforting words. This left Johnny and Amari staring awkwardly at one another.

"You want to get some air? I like her rooftop." He was already moving when he issued this invitation, grabbing the quarter bottle of whiskey from the table as he left. She hesitated before following. She could still hear Tom sobbing - a heartbreaking sound that made her feel sick to her stomach - and wanted to get away from it.

The rooftop was a smooth, flattish dome with sloped sides. It wasn't very big, and it was mostly covered in plants and gardening implements. It would have been easy to fall off and Amari had never enjoyed being up here, being unaccustomed to ill-defined spaces and heights of every sort. She pushed some of the plants aside, sitting cross-legged far away from the edge, leaving the one chair to Johnny.

"So, you're Moira's new assistant. How's the job so far?" He grinned at her silence, teeth bright in the darkness that covered them. "That good, huh? She's a character, that's for sure. I don't know what you'd have to pay me to live with her permanently, but probably more than what you're making."

"How do you know her?" She felt that nothing would surprise her tonight.

"Oh, we used to have an act together at the Tops casino in Vegas. I did a ventriloquist bit with a dummy named Mitzy, and Moira accompanied with castanets. We were one-of-a-kind. It all ended when the locals burned Mitzy for firewood, though." He said this with the casual air of someone reminiscing over good times, and it took her a moment to catch on.

"You're from _Nevada_? How… that's _very_ far away. When did you…?" She heard him laughing and stiffened, angry and surprised. "Well, fuck you too. Why lie about stupid stuff?"

"I don't know," he said, still chuckling. "The truth is boring. I don't like it. One of those three statements is true." He lit a cigarette and took a leisurely drag, irritating her sensitive lungs with the smell. "Sorry. I didn't mean to get a rise out of you with my bullshit. The fact is, I've know Moira for almost ten years, from when she lived in my neck of the woods, up in Boston area. She's always been the way she is. Might have gotten a little worse out here, though. I think she's lonely. You've got a medical background, right? What do you think's wrong up there?"

Amari shrugged, still mad at him. "I've got a guess, but it's not your business to know and anyway, a diagnosis wouldn't do her any good without treatment. She should quit drinking, though. It's exacerbating the mood swings."

"Yeah. Probably." He sounded tired. "She's brilliant though, really. Does some really interesting things for… our organization. She's the whole reason I dragged Tom across open country for weeks, so they could brainstorm together for a few days. _That_ was no picnic, I can tell you. He's a complete wreck, on account of he lost his whole family last year."

"That's awful. Poor guy." She wanted to ask about the organization he'd mentioned, but suspected he'd give her another lie without blinking.

"No kidding." They sat in silence for several minutes, looking out on the dark, quiet town. Amari guessed that it was after midnight by now, and looked down automatically at the face of the Pip-Boy that wasn't there, feeling a renewed pang of loss. Johnny broke the silence. "So, now that we've established that you're the only sane one among us tonight, who are you? What's your thing?"

"I'm a vault-dweller. Or at least I was until recently. Now I'm trying to adjust to life on the outside - which has been hell on my immune system - so I can make it out here. When I get stronger, I want to go find my father." As much as she tried to inject some enthusiasm into it, the well-rehearsed line sounded dull to her own ears.

"Liar." This answer came immediately, gentle rather than accusatory, but firm all the same. Undeniable.

She hadn't been expecting that. "What?"

"You're lying. You can't lie to a liar. What do you _really_ want to do, Amari?"

Caught in her own self-deception, she felt cold inside, and answered in a small voice. "I want to go back to the vault. Back to the way things were before."

" _Can_ you?" There was compassion as well as curiosity here, and she almost broke down completely.

"Probably not. No. I… I burned some bridges the day I left. And I don't really want to now, either. The way things were is gone forever. He-... they're _murderers_ there." Her teeth were chattering now, but not because of cold - it was actually quite warm outside - but from stress. She wanted to cry, but couldn't in front of this deceitful, annoying _stranger_.

"Oh hell, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you out on that. That wasn't nice of me. Bad Deacon. Er, bad _Johnny_." He slipped down to the ground beside her and put one arm over her shoulders, removing it hastily when she flinched at the touch. "I understand having a lie you tell yourself. Really. That's the most important one. Do and say what you need to. That's my motto."

"Yeah? How's that working out for you?" She didn't think this strange man was _happy_ , not at all. Behind the smiles and the lies, he seemed desperately sad.

"Eh. I'm still alive, aren't I? That's a success in my book." He stubbed out the cigarette and finished off the bottle beside him, before standing up to leave. "Guess I should go see how Tom's getting along. It's nice to meet you, Amari. If you you ever sort out your shit and want a new job - a new _raison d'être_ , if you like - come up to Boston. You won't find us, but we'll find _you_."

"Who's 'we'?" she called after him, but either he didn't hear or he ignored the question, because in a moment she heard the trapdoor slam behind him. Left alone in the dark, she sat there for a long time, thinking about what he'd said, before climbing down and going straight to bed. She could still hear Tom crying below, but it was quiet enough that she could sleep.

Moira's visitors stayed for three more days, mostly holed up in the back of the building, talking in low tones while Amari held down the fort on the public side of the shop. She admitted to being curious, but didn't try to intrude or eavesdrop; whatever their business was, it wasn't hers. She had her own problems to deal with, after all.

It wasn't until months later, long after she'd made the acquaintance of the mysterious man she called Richard, that she came to understand what that visit had been about. In the years to come, she would wonder how differently things might have been if Moira - if _Deacon_ , for that matter - had just been straight with her from the beginning. But, by the time she understood, she was already committed to the course that would shape the rest of her life, for better or for worse.


	4. To Catch an Eyebot

" _Ha! Look at this! New blood! Tell me girl, you ever hear of the Enclave? The last remnant of the good ol' USA, they are! Now, I don't know you from Adam, but I got you pegged for a patriot, and any patriot worth her salt is gonna toss her gun in for the Enclave. Any day now, they're gonna roll up here and then this nightmare'll be over for good! But listen to me ramble. I'm Nathan. What can I do for you?"_

" _Uh… hi. Why do you support the Enclave, Nathan?"_

" _Why? Look around you. This is the good ol' USA. Sure, she looks a little bit different these days, but you're still on American soil. And even if you were born in some underground vault, you were born under the United States, which makes you an American. And it's your duty and my duty to support our country and our president, no matter what. Understand?"_

" _Do you really think people who fought a war with tyrants wanted unquestioning support?"_

" _Well… when you put it that way… wait, you're just trying to confuse me with your fancy vault education and your textbooks! I'll have no part in that treasonous misinformation! Did you have something else you wanted to ask, or were you done with your crazy talk?"_

* * *

The hazmat suit was a near-total total loss. That was clear from the beginning. Spelled out on the tatters of its savaged material was the story of its previous owner's demise: a yao guai's claws had done effortlessly what radioactive sludge (theoretically) could not. Amari hadn't asked where Moira had found the ruined suit, afraid that she'd hear yet another sad story about a dead assistant, but had accepted the opportunity to improve her own gear. After rinsing off all of the dried blood, she had begun the process of removing the thick, rubber hands and feet from the suit and sewing elastic cuffs to the ends - pulled on over long sleeves of her shirts and worn as waders on top of her thin shoes, these would help to provide a waterproof barrier against whatever hazardous substances she might handle or step on. The remaining material she laid aside for a future project; she'd adopted Moira's almost obsessive habit of never disposing of anything that might one day be useful.

Now four months removed from the vault, she'd been making forays into the area outside of Megaton for a while now, seldom losing sight of the town's bristling metal gates, and using that landmark to orient herself in lieu of the Pip-Boy's map. Thinking about this, she scowled, biting her lip. The subject of her former Pip-Boy had become a sore one for her, albeit one she didn't feel she had the right bring up to Moira. The fact was, she had _never_ seen the woman making use of the device, and had only occasionally seen her tinkering with it, its complicated mechanical insides exposed to the woman's probing tools. It was her right to do with it as as she wanted, Amari knew, but it still rankled her to witness what was probably Moira's slow-motion destruction of the precious computer in the guise of "finding out how it worked."

She sighed. Moira was a difficult person to live with for several reasons, and these only became more glaring as time went on. In the early days, any difficulties had been overshadowed by an immense feeling of gratitude toward her benefactor. She'd forgiven every irrational, hurtful diatribe, every ridiculous request, and every complaint, knowing that she owed the woman her freedom, and possibly her life. Thankfulness could cover up a great multitude of sins, but her situation was just uncomfortable enough that staying on indefinitely in Megaton wasn't very tempting, even for someone with nowhere to go. For these accumulated reasons, therefore, it was in a mutinous frame of mind that Amari received Moira's latest demand.

"I want an eyebot. Go get me an eyebot." There was no preamble, no niceties, no attempt to temper this request with politeness, and this was coming from a woman who'd spent most of the last few days holed up in her room, leaving all of the work to her assistant.

"Good afternoon to you too, Moira," said Amari calmly. "What's an eyebot and why do you need one?"

Moira ran fretful fingers through her unwashed hair, looking the picture of weary disgust. " _Ugh_. You _know_. Those flying robots. You've seen them, surely. They're always playing the Enclave radio station. I want to know more about them."

Amari had seen the robots, of course, but hadn't known what to call them. She answered readily enough, "Okay. I'll think through my approach and start trying tomorrow."

"No. Now. Do it now. Or what am I paying you for?"

Without laying aside her sewing, Amari met Moira's eyes steadily. "I spent the morning painting fence-posts at the Stoker farm with mole-rat repellent. I've single-handedly run the store for the past three days. It's the hottest part of the day and in five hours it will be completely dark. In short, I'm not leaving town again until tomorrow. I suggest you tell me what you know about eyebots and I'll focus on the task in a timely fashion."

Moira made a rude sound, but didn't say anything, instead moving to switch the radio from Three Dog's music hour to the peculiar broadcast that called itself Enclave radio. The two of them listened in silence for a long time, until the entire loop had played. Amari had never heard the entire thing before - no one in town liked it very much (with the notable exception of Nathaniel Vargas), and she'd only caught bits and pieces here and there. After having heard all of what this John Henry Eden had to say, she felt no more enlightened now she had been before.

The last strains of fife music faded away, and the first speech began again, prompting Moira to switch it off entirely. The ensuing silence was a great relief from Eden's oily voice, but Moira broke it immediately, "What did you think about that?"

She was puzzled and said as much, adding a tentative question, "Is it some sort of… pre-war propaganda system that's still running in its traces? There was no President Eden before the war, I know that much. But perhaps the government kept running for a short time after the bombs fell, and set up this system to try to keep people calm?"

"No, it's contemporary in origin," Moira corrected immediately. "He talks about ghouls, supermutants, and the Brotherhood of Steel. The content changes slightly every year. These bots, this station - they've only been running for about fifteen years now, sharing their inane message in rigidly-defined cells on an invisible grid covering the entire Capital area. Can you think of who would benefit from trying to manufacture a political identity for the ordinary people of this region?"

Amari tried to think about what she had learned of the different factions in the Capital Wasteland. "I don't know much about the power players in the outside world. From what I _do_ know, I would have said that this fit the M.O. and capabilities of the Brotherhood of Steel the best… but, as you point out, he mentions them as a separate organization."

"Not just separate, but _inferior_. That's interesting, isn't it? A little scary, too. The Brotherhood of Steel may not currently be good for much more than restricting the mutants to downtown DC, but they are the most well-equipped people you're likely to meet outside of the Commonwealth these days. Power armor, heavy weapons, high-level tech… the works. They're also pretty decent people, if a little arrogant, and it's worrying that this Enclave group has set their face against them."

Amari was confused on one point in particular. "The main thing that made me lean 'pre-war' was his casual reminiscing about his boyhood days in rural Kentucky. Like, sure, whatever used to be that state still exists, and there are probably some people there, but I wouldn't expect it to be the utopia he makes it out to be. Why would he say something so odd? And so easily falsifiable?"

"You're overestimating the average wastelander's grasp on geography. And critical thinking. But you're right. It doesn't make sense. So why do it? What's he going for?" The question _could_ have been rhetorical, but the way she leaned forward made Amari think that Moira was actually interested in her answer. The recording _had_ sparked a recollection of a long-ago history lesson...

"Well, I'm pretty sure he's evoking a 'fireside chat' sort of thing, like FDR did back in the twentieth century. I wouldn't expect anyone around here to pick up on that, but it still serves to establish this 'president' as someone strong and paternal. Not your _friend_ , _per se_ , but a protector. A father. Someone who knows best."

Moira nodded, eyes intent on her face. "What else?"

Warming to the subject, she continued, "The world is full of enemies. You're either with him or against him. Only he has the solution to the problems within and without. As bad as things are now, that's how good things will be in the future… with him in control. And all of this is wrapped up in the superficial trappings of patriotism." She laughed, a little bitterly. "His method could have come right out of the Overseer's handbook, right down to the attempt to foster a cohesive group identity with the forms and symbols of pre-war America. Every schoolchild salutes a flag from a dead world. We even had a two-hundred-year-old portrait of President Davis on the wall of each classroom, right next to the current Overseer's. The kids treated it as a bit of a joke, but it would probably work better on a bigger population."

Moira nodded, satisfied by this analysis. "So, say you're a person or a group with a thousand armed, armored, mobile radios and you've successfully insinuated your message into every community. Only a few have really bit hard at the bait - poor old Nathan, for a local example - but everyone else at least knows who you are, even if they don't expect much from a voice full of promises. What do you do next?"

"Monetize it, or otherwise take advantage of it somehow. Capitalize on the familiarity, the pocket loyalties. The missing ingredient to actually _using_ this power is a show of force. But why would you bother doing all of this if you couldn't back it up somehow?" Amari was interested in spite of herself, and was glad Moira had condescended to talk it out.

" _Exactly_. That's why I need to study this. So that we can be prepared."

"So... you want me to steal an 'armed, armored' robot that belongs to a would-be shadow government. Do you think they're doing surveillance as well?"

"Yes. Without damaging it too much, if you please. And yes, it's possible that they're sending a visual or auditory feed somewhere. Don't show your face or say anything compromising." Moira started walking away. "The one that hangs around in Springvale would be the safest, I think. Other than a couple of squatters in the town, and a pack of raiders in the school, there's nothing to worry about."

"No, nothing at all," she called sarcastically after her retreating back. "I'm sure this will go just swell."

Moira's mood soured again without warning. "You're not getting paid again until I have my bot, so you'd better bring one back. All of my _other_ assistants could handle more than the occasional mole-rat, you know."

"Yeah, well, all of your other assistants quit or _died_ , probably when you asked them do something they weren't capable of. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll be one of the former!" A slamming door was the only answer she got, and she returned, fuming and dismayed, to her sewing, trying to think about how she could secure an eyebot without risking injury. After finishing her last stitch, she took up a pencil and a scrap of paper and started writing down things that she had observed or wondered about eyebots:

1\. They're bigger than they look at a distance. Maybe a foot and a half across, not counting antennae. How heavy?

2\. Ranged weapons - lasers. Fixed weapon - electric prod thing? Rubber gloves a must, but possibly inadequate.

3\. Docile until attacked ( _citation needed_ ). More than a match for multiple dogs, molerats, and bloatflies.

4\. Propulsion works how? Note to self: try to ask Moira this after she's cooled down with a few drinks.

5\. Can I outrun it?

Slowly, an idea formed in her mind and she ventured into the supply closet, hoping that what she found there would give a clearer shape to her vision. She hoped Moira wouldn't object to her discretionary use of whatever materials she could find, because this project would require a small fortune to finish. Well, vague marching orders deserved an expensive solution.

* * *

After working long into the night, with no further sign of Moira other than her closed door, Amari was finally satisfied with her plan to catch an eyebot. Her hands were sore and striped with red marks from twisting wire, and scratched from handling the sharp ends and rough materials, but she was proud of what she had created. Whether it would _work_ was another question entirely, but for the first time in her life, she had something tangible to show for her effort. She could almost have thanked Moira for the challenge that had spurred her to solve this problem on her own; the accomplishment marked a turning point that she could recognize even in the moment. To her, it felt as if until now she'd been a sleepy passenger in life, going through the motions of living, reacting to things as they came with all of the passion of a Mr. Handy; but _now_ she was awake, a complete person, and an adult in her own right. Or maybe she had simply absorbed a bit of Moira's grandiose thinking - it was hard to tell.

The _thing_ she had made was rather ugly and very heavy, she admitted, though, given what it had to do and what it was made out of, this was necessary. Three months ago, she'd have been hard-pressed to even lift it above her head, let alone drag it more than two miles to Springvale. But she'd grown much stronger since she'd joined Moira's household; all those months of carrying plants, making deliveries, sorting inventory, and running errands had paid off. Good nutrition and sanitation had also helped drag her system back to a more-or-less stable state of health, though she took great pains to avoid consuming suspect food and drink, and never left the house without first insulating herself against the elements, earning herself a reputation for oddness with the full face mask and gloves she wore everywhere. Was it still germaphobia if her fears were justified? Amari didn't know and didn't care. What was important was that she could breathe again, with only a mild, lingering cough at this point. She could push her maximum scouting range a little longer each time she tried without tiring herself. She could - and often did - crack a dog or a molerat's skull with a single blow from her iron-capped baseball bat. She was still vault-soft and inexperienced in most of the things that really mattered out here, but she was coming closer to being on par with the other town-dwellers, at least.

She slept well that night and awoke, rather late, to find the cold remains of breakfast in the kitchen for her to pick over. This was surprising, and a good sign of an improvement in her employer's mood. Also surprising: the woman was actually dressed and the shop was open for business. And it was only ten o'clock. The only troubling element was the bitter smell of hot metal wafting in from the sales floor. _What has she been doing in there?_ Amari thought, with no small amount of alarm.

"Well, good morning, sleepyhead," Moira greeted her with a smile. "Late start today? That's alright. I've been studying your net and making a few improvements of my own. The design is a pretty good one, but I was concerned the wire wouldn't hold, so I've been soldering the points that'll be most at risk of failing."

Still chewing on a cornbread pancake smeared with a little mutfruit jam, Amari quashed a flare of resentment at having her pet project interfered with, reminding herself that Moira's enthusiastic participation was never a bad thing when it came to a scientific endeavor. "Thanks. I got the idea from a picture I saw of a fisherman's net in an old book. I thought that if I could get it inside of a barrel-shaped net made from a double thickness of chicken wire, it'd have a hard time disentangling itself, especially once I've cinched the opening tight with the trailing cable."

"Seems plausible. And the asbestos lining the interior of your drum?" She sounded friendly and interested, not angry at her employee's prodigal use of materials, and this gave Amari the courage to respond confidently.

"I'm not sure how the propulsion works, but it's bound to be hot, especially once it's firing from inside of a bag. Possibly so hot that it'd weaken the mesh enough to tear. This guards against that possibility. The lining should also cut off much of its sensory input, in case it still tries to use its weapons from the inside."

"The whole thing might even act as a Faraday cage, disrupting the signal controlling it and preventing a distress beacon," Moira murmured. "We can hope. Alright then. You have my blessing to try it. _Do_ be careful out there, won't you? Would you like to borrow a gun?"

"No, thank you," she answered firmly. "This bat is adequate, even if I have to practice my homerun swing on the bot."

Moira looked her straight in the eyes now, uncharacteristically calm and serious. "If you ever want to leave Megaton behind, you're going to have to start carrying a gun. No matter where you go, it's 'shoot or get shot,' and that's the truth."

"I can't." She couldn't explain why, but even her brief and occasional handling of the small guns they sold at the store brought back that terrible instant at the vault entrance. The pistol cracks, the smell of gunpowder, and all of the blood - none of it hers - staining her hands and the floor… this was the vision that played over and over in clear, horrible vividness whenever the subject came up, and she couldn't even start down the road of thinking about it for long without finding herself shaking and shutting down. For now, it seemed sufficient to merely defend herself at close range; in the wild, after all, she was a small, drab brown target who actively avoided confrontation with a stealthiness born of a lifetime of doing the same thing in the corridors of Vault 101. "I just can't do that. It's too fresh."

Moira had heard the story of her escape from the vault - or at least the version of the story that Amari had chosen to share - and nodded as if she understood, but pressed the issue firmly anyway, "Unless you're going to spend your life behind walls, you need a better weapon."

Shaking her head, Amari walked away to get ready for the day. Moira didn't get it. She didn't _want_ to kill people at all. Two deaths on her conscience had been two too many.

Amari had fashioned, scavenged, and otherwise acquired two reasonably well-fitting sets of clothing by now. They were each equally ugly - pants of rough canvas, held up by a rope belt run through the loops on her waist, and shapeless, long-sleeved shirts of an unpleasant, scratchy material. She wore one of these outfits on errands until it was caked in grime, changing to the clean one when she stepped inside; every week she washed the dirty one and started using the clean one for her expeditions. Having dressed, she now stood in the tiny closet of a washroom, noting grumpily that only a tiny portion of the water she had hauled and boiled the evening before now remained; Moira had finally caught up on bathing, it seemed. Running the rough side of a dry corn cob through her hair, Amari splashed water on her face and studied it in the large, cracked mirror that hung on the wall, once more taking stock of the changes that had crept into her appearance.

There was no sign of that slight plumpness that Butch and the others had occasionally teased her about when she was a girl; that had disappeared almost immediately, burned away by illness. The woman who looked back at her was thin - too thin even now, almost gaunt, with her cheekbones painfully defined under distant, somewhat sunken eyes. As much as she'd tried to protect it from the wind and the sun and the toxic elements all around, her honey brown skin was no longer smooth and clear, but now bore a scattering of pimples and a persistent rash under her chin, an ongoing irritation from the rough scarf she wore wrapped around her head and over her mouth and nose in the style that Moira called _keffiyeh_. Her hair, once a glossy, thick brown so dark that it was almost black, had turned brittle and straw-like from malnutrition and poor health, and had even begun falling out in her final days as Moriarty's prisoner; depressed at this, early on in her new existence she had asked Moira to shave it off altogether, leaving only a dark stubble behind. It had come in an inch or two since, and seemed to be growing healthier along with the rest of her, but it still felt greasy from infrequent washing and the slimy, homemade soap they all used.

The face was older than the nineteen years she had; it reminded Amari, with a sharp, unexpected pang of recollected loss, of a picture she had once seen of her mother as a newlywed. The woman in the photo had been happier, of course; she hadn't yet - and never would - go through anything like the drawn-out pain and deprivation that her daughter was destined for. As a small child, she used to creep into her father's quarters to retrieve it from its hiding place in his bureau and look at it, sometimes pretending to talk to the mother she couldn't remember at all. This had ended when her father caught her at it one day; though he didn't strike her or shout at her for the intrusion, he did ask her to leave in no uncertain terms, holding the small frame in trembling hands. She had never found the picture again, despite much searching, and had never dared to bring it up to her father. Amari had forgotten about that picture until this moment, and now felt horribly homesick for the life she'd known.

With a sigh, she covered her familiar-yet-unfamiliar face, winding the scarf around and around, using the fabric to secure a compact metal helmet to her head - and then covering it, too, lest its shiny surface give her away. She capped this with heavy goggles, tinted a dark red against the sun's harsh rays, and slid on the gloves and waders that she'd cut from the hazmat suit the day before. Not a single square centimeter of skin remained exposed; she was as protected as she could be without the armor she could neither afford nor easily carry.

Loaded with her eyebot-catching thing, the baseball bat, a small first aid kit, and the half-gallon of water she never dared to leave town without, she was at the absolute limit of her carry weight and groaned internally at the prospect of hauling everything to Springvale. As if that wasn't enough, on her way out the door, Moira stepped out from behind the counter and extended her hand with yet another item to carry.

She accepted it without thinking. It was a smooth, silvery cylinder with a darkened blue LED at one end and a switch at the other and weighed about half a pound. "What's this?"

"Pulse grenade. Call it a back-up plan, if something goes wrong. It can't hurt you… much… but it _will_ short out the robot. I don't know how useful it will be to me if that happens, so try not to take that step, if you please."

It was the closest thing she'd get to an apology for the previous night, and Amari felt absurdly touched by the gesture. "Thanks, Moira."

"Welcome." The crazy grin was back. "Now go get that bot!"

* * *

The eyebot was as consistent as… well, a well-programmed machine. It flew by in front of the Red Rocket fuel station every hour or so, tinkling out its tinny marching band or announcing President Eden's new age of prosperity. The time interval was only Amari's rough estimation, since she didn't have a watch. She took up a watchful stand in one of the ruined houses across the street, crouching down low in the shadows each time to avoid detection, not even daring to breathe as it passed by a mere twenty feet away. Once. Twice. A third time, and still she hesitated to do more than observe. The thing was tough. She'd seen this specific unit fight off a whole pack of molerats by itself, their claws and yellowed teeth scraping uselessly off its armored sides, and she remembered poking through the pile of charred corpses it had left behind, trying to find a portion of the meat that hadn't been burned too badly. She knew the eyebot would kill her easily if it came to an actual fight.

She resolved to act the next time it came, and prepared for its return by drinking water and eating the food she had brought with her: fruit and vegetables, sun-dried on the roof of the Craterside Supply. However, when it came into sight again, winding through the boxy ranch houses in the distance, her nerve faltered; perhaps it would be better to test its docility first.

Leaving her weapon, her net, and everything else hidden in the alcove of the house's ancient fireplace, still relatively intact despite the centuries of neglect, she shuffled onto the road and strolled casually toward the bot, looking straight ahead. She could hear it now as well as see it: " _It's time we discussed something rather important…_ " It was fifty feet ahead now, the voice growing louder as it approached. " _...question has been raised, I know, as to just_ how _I came to be elected…_ " It was bearing down on her, the two speakers like dark eyes seeming to examine her. She tensed for the fire, the lighting that would burn through her chest, but it never came. " _Isn't the right to vote the very foundation of a democracy?_ " John Henry Eden may have asked the question, but the bot wasn't interested in her answer; it continued past, so close that she could have reached out to grab one of the slender poles trailing from behind it. It was leaving now, continuing its mindless course until she could no longer hear it, " _...when my term is up, America will be free to elect a new President..."_ It hadn't attacked. Had taken no notice of her at all. She giggled a little, and almost toppled over, dizzy from relief. Or possibly the heat. It was now mid-afternoon, and her clothes were soaked through and even a few minutes in the sun took a lot out of her. She sat down in the shade and loosened her scarf slightly, pouring a cup of the precious water on her head and drinking the rest. Either she would manage it on the next run, or she would defer the attempt to the next day and head back to Megaton.

Another forty-five minutes passed all too quickly, and she stood, stretching her muscles for the task. Lugging her weird, patchy barrel with one hand, the long cable dragging behind, she kept a casual eye on the road ahead, and at the bobbing bot moving serenely toward her. She'd wait until the right moment, and then she'd flip the whole thing up, holding the open mouth in front of the thing. With any luck, it wouldn't be able to respond fast enough to correct its course and would fly right in. And that was _exactly_ what happened.

Days later, when her bruises, scratches, and burns had finally healed and she'd moved on to a new project, Amari would reflect that the plan had worked about as well as it deserved to, given the deficit of her knowledge about eyebots - it would have been _really_ nice to know how they stayed in the air, how they would respond to being caught, and, most importantly, how damn _strong_ they were.

It flew in, as planned, the radio broadcast cut off mid-word, and she threw herself back to seize and pull the cable, as planned. At the tug of the cable, the malleable wire mesh crumpled in on the mouth of the net, again, all as planned. What she hadn't accounted for was how easily the eyebot would compensate for the added weight of the net - not to mention the weight of hapless human - despite being completely enclosed in a bag. She had expected to have to drag an angry, overheating bot, thrashing but still helpless in its confinement; what she _got_ was an enraged and still self-suspended prisoner that immediately turned away to flee, pulling a few feet of the woven steel cable through her rubber-gloved grip before she got a better hold, unwisely twisting the end around her forearm to better secure it there.

At that point, the attempt at capturing the bot became a futile exercise in trying to stay on her feet as it made a mad beeline for some uncertain target to the northwest, now moving faster than she had ever seen it move. It ignored most geological features, pulling her over rocks, through bushes, and whipping around the tight corners of the tiny town without any concern for the person that held its leash. While it had a direction that it seemed very sure of, it was not, however, able to anticipate the objects it occasionally encountered at head height. Buzzing furiously, it ran into the side of a house, the shell of a burned-out moving van, and a lamppost, stunning itself for a second each time it did so. At the third instance, Amari had an idea, and took advantage of its confusion to wrap the length of the cable around the lamppost several times and shoving the end through a couple of the loops for a crude but effective tether. She narrowly missed being brained by the flailing bot in the process and, while ducking underneath it, was singed slightly by the hot exhaust spilling from the small gap at the mouth of the net.

Fairly confident that it wasn't going to pull the cable free - though it might, she worried, simply tear the shoddy cage apart - she stepped back to let the bot batter itself against the immobile steel pole. Whipping first this way and then that, it resembled nothing so much as a possessed tetherball, where every returning volley was marked by a resounding clang and more staticky burbling. This went on for twenty or thirty minutes, and both the hasty knot and the net itself held, with the eyebot becoming weaker and weaker as time went on, losing height and mobility as it damaged itself further. While she waited to approach it, not wanting to jump the gun on the still-dangerous machine, Amari checked herself for injury. Her arms hurt from being pulled along, her knees were bleeding under her torn pants from the brambles and stones, and there was a prickly feeling on her back where the heat from the bot had washed over her, but otherwise she felt alright. Even triumphant. It felt good to win a fight, as she hadn't won many in her life.

She waited until the lumpy bag was completely still and quiet and then made herself wait ten minutes more before unwrapping the cable and beginning the long walk back to Megaton, dragging the inanimate robot like the corpse of a dead dog. Her travel bag - along with the baseball bat and her empty canteen - still lay in the fireplace of the ruined house; already at her physical limit, and not wanting to turn aside for anything, she decided that she would retrieve them later, after she'd rested and cared for herself. No one would disturb them in the meantime, she decided.

She was so focused on getting home and pulling her awkward burden that she didn't even glance around. If she had, she might have seen the wary individual who had been studying this entire action sequence from the cracked windows of one of the houses behind the Red Rocket station. This unseen watcher was expecting an enemy, though he didn't know what face it would wear; he was consequently alert to anything and everything unusual, and the skinny waster wrestling with the eyebot certainly counted. When the scavver turned to leave with their bounty, however, he relaxed; no enemy of _his_ would bother with such paltry prey. After all, _they_ sought a more dangerous game.


	5. Tall, Dark, and Handsome

" _You have to tell your best friend, Amata. Who do you like?"_

" _You're going to laugh."_

" _I won't. I promise!"_

" _Jonas. It's Jonas, okay?"_

" _Ewww... he's so_ old _. Like, twenty-five. Plus, he's dating Anna Wilkins."_

" _Well, it's not like the boys our age are worth thinking about, right? And I didn't say it was a realistic crush. Now your turn, Mari."_

" _No one in here. If there's anybody for me, he's out_ there _somewhere. I've just got to go find him."_

* * *

Morning again, though it was still dark down in the crater. The sun's rays wouldn't touch the bomb at the bottom until nine or ten at least, and right now it was barely visible in the gloom. Having gone to bed almost immediately after returning home the previous evening, Amari had gotten a much earlier start today, with almost no one stirring in Megaton when she got up to leave. She spotted only one other person out and about as she slipped from the shop, locking the door behind her. The saloon owner was hunched over the railing far above, glaring down on the valley; she looked away quickly, not wanting to let him affect her mood. She was sore - _God_ , she was sore - but the buoyant feeling of success had carried over through the night. The flush of triumph was a heady drug indeed, and it brought out a side of her that her old self would scarcely had recognized.

Circumstances and personal limitations called for the prudent path: skulk down to Springvale under cover of dawn's dim light, retrieve her possessions from the crumbling chimney, and be back in Megaton before the sun had risen more than two fingers over the horizon. Then, she'd nurse her bruises over endless cups of tea, reading a book - something light and frivolous, perhaps - and shooting the breeze with customers while a newly-cheerful Moira spread pieces of eyebot all over the floor. She could do worse than to slowly idle away the day; after all, she _deserved_ a break, didn't she?

This was all good advice that she was nevertheless in the mood to disregard. The newly-awakened adventurous self - the _dangerous_ one - wanted to strike out in the general direction of the river that she knew lay to the east, to seek out a better vista on the tombstones of the city she'd someday visit; she needn't go back right away, after all - she had a little food and a quart of water. She would hug cover, stay low, and work on mapping a new region to explore further in the days and weeks ahead. Yes, that also sounded good. She was torn in two directions - safety on one hand, and excitement on the other - and didn't know which voice to listen to.

She was so busy daydreaming on the way to her destination that she didn't notice the man standing in the streets of Springvale below until she had drawn quite near, close enough to make out the details of his appearance. Taller than anybody she had ever met, he wore a matte-black leather coat along with matching boots and gloves. Ducking down behind the rusty shell of an old Ford pickup, she watched him warily, not daring to move, even to retreat to a safer distance. The long gun on his back, tipped with a glowing green barrel, frightened her more than a little; no one in Megaton had a weapon like that. It looked like a weapon from an old war vid, an energy weapon that could turn people into greenish slop.

He was looking the other way, toward the row of houses across the median, and Amari didn't _think_ that he could have heard her slight noise - she wasn't _that_ close - but then, as if had he felt her eyes on his back, he stiffened and turned in her direction, alert to her presence like a dog that's caught a scent. The gun was in his hands now, and he was moving toward her, stealthy and graceful despite his size; she could see his face now - dark, smooth, and beardless, eyes hidden under large, mirrored sunglasses, black hair cropped very short. Even now, she didn't move. She was frozen, not in fear exactly, but in confusion - who _was_ this man? Why was he here? She opened her mouth to call out to him, but before she could say, "Don't shoot!" or maybe "Hi there!" a third player entered onto the scene.

It happened so fast that she couldn't later be sure where the attacker had come from. From the shadows beside the ruin that still held her belongings, perhaps. It was another man - just as tall as the first, but pale-skinned, albeit with a bad sunburn, and dressed in the ragged remains of a jumpsuit that had once been white, a sweaty cap of brown hair slicked down over his scalp. He didn't speak, but swung something - a tire iron or a crowbar, she guessed - at Mr. Black Coat's unprotected head. Surprising even herself, Amari stood up and yelled a garbled warning to the one she'd seen first, pointing behind him. His reaction time was nothing short of amazing. Wheeling around, he caught the weapon one-handed, jerked it out of the attacker's grip, and swung it back around - almost casually, but very hard - into the side of his opponent's head with a dull thud. Tossing the tool aside contemptuously, he approached the prone figure with the gun aimed straight at his face.

"You will return with me now." His deep, impassive voice rang with authority and confidence, but Amari didn't know why he was bothering to bandy words. The man was almost certainly dead or dying from a cracked skull. No human would be conscious after that, let alone going anywhere with anybody. Thoroughly freaked out by the killing, Amari tensed to run away, preparing for a sprint across the open and back toward Megaton, wanting to be well away from this scene before the first man remembered her. The second man's unexpected answer stopped her in her tracks.

"I'm not going back there. You'll have to kill me." He spoke more quietly than the other, voice trembling with open emotion, but she could still hear him clearly - he was desperate and defiant, afraid and angry. More to the point, he was _alive_. She was amazed.

The first man sighed heavily. "As you wish, though it's a waste of your personality routines. A3-21, initialize factory reset, authorization code: Beta..."

Focused on the prisoner's face, she wasn't watching his hands. Neither was his opponent, it seemed. With an inhumanly quick gesture, the downed man drew what looked like a snarl of wires from his pocket and thrust it toward the other man with one hand, protecting his own face with the other. Spidery threads of blue lightning, so bright it hurt to look directly at them, erupted from the device, arcing out and disappearing only a few feet from the source - into the ground, into the air… and into the first man's head. At first, it seemed to have no effect. He remained on his feet for a moment, and touched one hand tentatively to his temple as though he were trying to remember something, and then he toppled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

For a moment, everything was still. Somewhere, a bird twittered. Then, the desperate one crept over and tugged the rifle from the unconscious man's unresisting grip, staring down at him as if he couldn't believe it. Coming to some internal resolve, he raised the gun, slowly but deliberately, and prepared to fire.

Not understanding why she did it, still acting on impulse, Amari straightened up again and yelled, "Don't kill him!" while simultaneously throwing the first object that came to hand, which turned out to be a rotting stick that fell far short of its target. For a split second, the green barrel was pointing straight at _her_ and she went cold, but then he seemed to think better of it and ran, still clutching the weapon. In a moment, he was out of sight.

Amari didn't understand why the man with a gun had been afraid of her, when she obviously had no better weapon than her bat (which she hadn't even had the chance to draw out), but at that moment she didn't care. Now that he was down and disarmed, the man in the black coat was no longer someone to be feared, but a person who needed help. Well, she would try. Pulling off her rubber gloves, she knelt beside him and tried to figure out what to do first. Every unconscious patient she'd ever seen - and she hadn't seen _that_ many in her time at the clinic - had a normal explanation behind them, usually provided by the security that carried them in: this man had been in a fight with his friend, this elderly woman had fallen in her quarters, this teenager had stolen a bottle of liquor and drunk himself into a stupor. None in _her_ memory had been blasted with mysterious energy, or even electrocuted. Not that the weapon had left much of a visible mark - only the tiniest of burns showed on his forehead - but it had certainly done _something_ to him.

He had fallen awkwardly, limbs folded under him and neck bent at a non-ideal angle, his chin touching his chest. Hoping that he hadn't injured his spine somehow, she rolled him over on his back and straightened him out, tilting his head back, opening the airway. He _was_ breathing normally, slowly, _not_ like a man who'd just been in a life-or-death struggle. His pulse was steady, strong, and - again - slow.

"You don't get excited, do you?" she asked the man, not expecting an answer, but prepared to dart away if he did stir suddenly. She moved to his face, checking the color of his gums to be sure, yes, his circulation was fine (and, irrelevantly, his teeth were perfect); satisfied of this, she pulled the sunglasses off. He wouldn't open his eyes to any kind of stimuli, and when she did peel the lids back, the pupils were fixed and contracted, tiny points of black on a dark brown background, unresponsive to light or movement. The weapon that had done this lay on the ground where it had fallen, and without a second thought, Amari grabbed it and stuffed it into her bag. Moira might know what it was.

She stood up and paced indecisively for a moment. What to do? She didn't know how to help him, and didn't have so much as a stimpak on her. If she left him in the open, dogs, mole-rats, or carnivorous insects might kill him before she could return with help, and there was no way she could get him back to town by herself. An idea came to her; dropping her bag in the dirt, she ran over to one of the houses still standing, the only one she knew to be inhabited. The door swung open at a touch, and the occupant, a woman who had skipped out on Moriarty recently, lay on the couch just inside the door. Amari's greeting died on her lips as she realized that help would not be forthcoming from this quarter.

"What the hell is going on today?" She checked the woman's pulse, though she knew at a glance that it was useless. Silver, a petite, sharp-tongued blonde who'd probably been pretty before the drugs, had taken her last hit of Psycho. Surprisingly, though, that wasn't what had killed her. The dark imprint of two large hands showed on her throat; someone had crushed her windpipe with intense pressure. Her death had been quick and brutal, and not all that long ago: her body was still warm despite the morning chill and her last cigarette still smoldered on the carpet, having fallen from her limp hand. Sickened, Amari ground it out under her foot before it burned the house down and stomped back outside, swallowing the urge to vomit.

Getting him in the house took long minutes, and would have been almost impossible if the ground had not been level and smooth. He was dense with muscle and considerably broader and taller than she was, and she could barely lift his shoulders an inch off the ground; too late, she realized that she ought to have taken the armored coat off - it probably added fifteen pounds to his weight - but by then he was already laid out on the dusty carpet, safely indoors.

"Right," she told him, panting. "I'll be back in a little while. Just… stay here. And don't die." Closing the door on him, she grabbed her belongings and jogged back to town, slowing to a walk several times to catch her breath again. Bursting into the Craterside Supply and barging into the kitchen, she shoved the recovered weapon under a sleepy Moira's nose without any preamble.

"Do you know what this is?" she demanded.

The other woman blinked and swept her messy hair out of her eyes, still chewing a bite of grain hulls soaked in brahmin milk. Swallowing the fibrous stuff with an effort, she offered a tentative answer, "Buncha wires and a thingamajig?"

Amari clicked her tongue impatiently. "Someone in Springvale just got shot in the head with a bolt of energy from this thing. I need to know what it did to him."

Putting down her breakfast, Moira examined the object more closely, peering at the power source and the structures beneath the ragged connections. After a few minutes of this, she said, more confidently, "I'd say someone scavenged this from the weapons array of a robo-brain. I took one apart myself once and this looks like the built-in mesmetron they have." Her eyes crinkled with concern. "Guy who got shot - does he still have his head? It's supposed to make people suggestible and stupid, but sometimes it just makes their heads pop. Once in a while, it makes them berserk. Not a great weapon for any purpose, really."

"Yes, he has a head, but something's wrong neurologically. He's comatose. Can you give me an advance on tomorrow's pay? I need to go hire someone - Jericho, maybe - to help me bring him back to town."

"No." Moira stood up immediately and walked briskly to her room, leaving Amari frustrated and dismayed, feelings that gave way to confusion when she saw that Moira had clipped a pistol to her belt, and even put on her shoes - on the wrong feet, true, but still. "Don't waste your money on that. And anyway, you do _not_ want to be alone in the wastes with Jericho. He's, like, sixty percent raider. At least. I'll come. Lucas Simms will come if we ask. Let's go. And grab my med-kit - it's better than yours."

Amari stared at her. " _You_ 'll come?" She couldn't remember the last time Moira had left the store, let alone the town.

She nodded as if it were nothing unusual. "Yep. C'mon, shake a leg."

Sure enough, Simms _was_ willing, and even exercised his authority as sheriff to commandeer a sling-stretcher from Church. Their group of four - the three adults plus Hardin, who jumped at the chance to help guard the expedition with his .22 rifle - made their way to Springvale. By this point, it had been about forty-five minutes since she'd left the man there, and she crossed her fingers as they approached, hoping that they weren't too late. When the row of houses came into sight, something occurred to Amari, and she sidled over to the sheriff, speaking softly.

"Hey, Simms, there's something…"

"What is it?"

"Silver's lying dead in the house. Strangled. It's not a good sight. You might not want your boy to see it."

He looked at her, a little pityingly. "Hardin's seen death before, vaultie. More than you, probably. But thank you for the consideration, I guess. Do you think this man is the murderer?"

"My money would be on the other guy - he seemed the desperate type, and might have killed her for the shelter - but I don't know. I didn't see it happen." She couldn't explain, even to herself, why she favored the first man over the second; it was probably because she _had_ seen him first, and because he was the one who'd ended up lying in the dirt. She'd always had a soft spot for an underdog.

There was no change in the man's status. His huge body still breathed, heart still beat, but there was no one at home. She and Simms slid him onto the stretcher, where he was almost too long and wide for the fabric. Simms stationed himself at one side, Amari took one pole, and both of them looked questioningly at Moira, who hadn't moved or said anything since they'd arrived.

Amari snapped her fingers. "A little help here, boss?"

The woman ignored her, but instead turned to Simms, voice shaking, "We should leave him here. Or kill him. Both, really."

He straightened up, rubbing the small of his back. "I'm not in the habit of killing unarmed, unconscious people. Or abandoning them to their deaths. Why, Moira? Do you know him?"

She spoke slowly, hesitating over her words, "No… not specifically. But I have a bad feeling about him. He's dangerous." Moira, who never acted afraid of anything, was obviously afraid of this man. Amari wondered what she saw in him that she herself could not.

Simms waited for more, but when she didn't elaborate, he gave her an incredulous look. "Is that all? I can't leave a man to die on account of a 'bad feeling.' Unless you have a real, concrete reason, we're not going to leave him out here." When she remained silent, he shook his head, saying firmly. "If he _was_ the one who killed Silver - or if he turns out to be bad news for Megaton - I'll finish him off myself. But we're going to give him to chance to speak for himself. We're a civilized community, even if we are out here at the back of end of nowhere. I didn't think I'd need to explain that to you. Understand?"

She didn't answer, but took up her side of the burden reluctantly, eyes fixed on the man.

"Did he have sunglasses on?" she muttered out of the corner of her mouth to her assistant.

Amari nodded. They were in her bag back at the store. "What are you thinking, Moira? How did you know?"

"Nothing. I can't say. Only… I hope he doesn't wake up. Someone like _him_ , all the way out _here_ , spells bad news. If he _does_ recover, stay on your guard around him. He's not what he appears to be. Though maybe he deserves a chance..." She seemed to be talking to herself now, and looked fearfully at Simms, at Amari, at the man at the stretcher, and even the boy walking beside them, as if afraid of being overheard.

She would say nothing else, and, once they had set him on Doc Church's table, which groaned alarmingly under his weight, she left without a word, followed soon after by the sheriff and his son. Church stood by, looking as put-out as always over being bothered. Amari did not like the town's doctor, though that was partly due to the circumstances under which she'd first met him: a feverish dream-state in which she felt like she was being tortured by the people around her. Even by the sane light of day, no longer ill and helpless, she didn't feel comfortable around him. He wasn't a nice person by any measure, the rumors said he was beholden to Moriarty for _something_ , and she wasn't all that confident in his competence either.

He glanced over the patient, poking experimentally at the tough material of the coat. "Don't see no bullet holes. No blood at all. What'd'you say he got hit with?"

"A mesmetron. Probably," she amended. Moira often knew what she was talking about, but not always.

"I don't know what that is. And I don't know what you expect me to do with him. He's perfectly healthy except for his brain, which might just be so much mush. There ain't nothing that could help him with that, obviously."

She was angry at his lack of concern, and raised her voice in response, "Well, _think_ about it for a minute. You're a doctor. Would a stimpak do anything for brain trauma? We never had any injuries like this in the vault, so I really don't know."

He crossed his arms in front of him, glaring at her, "Might not help, but can't really hurt. Stimpaks cost money, though. You got any?"

"There's 50 coming to me tomorrow."

A greedy look crossed over his face. "Fine. I'll take it when she gives it to you. Standard forty for the stim, ten to keep him here overnight for monitoring."

She sighed, knowing that her bargaining skill had room for improvement. "Agreed. But I want to watch you give it to him."

"Suspicious little girlie, aintcha? I liked you better when you were stuck under Moriarty's thumb. Help me roll him over on his side. I need to get at his neck." He jabbed a dirty, long-nailed finger near the top of the cervical vertebrae, near the base of the skull. "Needle goes right in here, about an inch and a half deep. Can help stabilize if there's a concussion. Might be a total waste in this case. Why do you care, anyway? Do you even know him?"

"No." She couldn't explain it any more simply than she had to Moira. "We have an obligation to help people in trouble. Or _I_ do, anyway."

He rolled his eyes. "I can see why Moira's taken such a shine to you. You're as batty as she is." He administered the stimpak and rolled the stranger back over, peering once more at the empty eyes. "Right. No need for you to stay here. Get out of my hair. Come back tomorrow with my money - and more, if you want me to keep him longer."

Fuming, and a little depressed over losing her entire week's pay before she'd even gotten it, Amari stepped outside. She'd already done two round trips to and from Springvale, and her legs and back still hurt from the previous day's exertions. But there was one more thing she had to do before she could stop for the day. She dragged herself up the ramp back to the store. The closed sign still hung in the window and Moira was nowhere in sight. Amari refilled her water and borrowed the shovel from the tool shelf. Someone had to do the job, and it had as well be her.

* * *

"I'm sorry it had to end this way for you," she told the fresh mound of earth behind the house as she carried stones to protect Silver's body from animals. "But at least you stuck it to that asshole, Moriarty. I wonder how many caps you _actually_ got away with. I heard 400, but that might just be drunk talk." When she was done, she limped into the house to cool off and rest for the last - yes, it would have to be the last - two-mile walk of the day. Her joints felt weak and loose and she was very, very tired. Without removing any of her protective gear - who knew how clean the furniture was here? - she flopped down on the couch to rest for a minute, not caring overmuch in the moment that a dead body had recently lain there. Something inside the cushion at her feet jingled under the impact.

"What's this?" she muttered out loud. Flipping the seat over, she found a slit in the upholstery. Pulling out a few handfuls of the disgusting, moldy polyester stuffing, her gloved fingers encountered something out of the ordinary.

Ten minutes later, she was still counting, making little piles of bottle caps on the coffee table in front of her. The empty leather bag lay beside her, its mouth gaping like that of a dead animal's, the drawstrings hanging down like long whiskers. "...324, 325, 326. Damn, woman. You did it. Kept most of it, too." She sat looking at the fortune in front of her for a long minute, thinking. Two factors gave her pause: a trickle of half-considered shame over robbing the dead, combined with her very _well_ -considered fear of Moriarty; surely, he'd catch wind of Silver's death soon and would be sending someone (or coming in person) to collect what he could. The thought of him walking through the door at any moment - and the thought of what this much money could mean for her future - woke her from her paralysis. She swept a hundred of the caps into her own pocket, and returned the rest to the bag. This, she placed securely under the hearthstone of the abandoned fireplace down the street, after prying it up with the crowbar from earlier and checking to ensure that no one was watching. _There_ , she thought upon replacing the stone, thoroughly satisfied with herself. _Now I have an emergency escape hatch._ A couple of boxes of sugar bombs, a few kitchen utensils, and a faded print dress (too small for Amari, but potentially useful for something) were the only other valuable things she saw fit to carry away from the house.

Exhausted, but happy, she trudged slowly back to town. She had money - and with it, her first real sense of security in months - and she had an interesting person to take care of. Somehow, finding someone worse off than herself and even more of an outsider made her feel like she had finally arrived as a real citizen of the outside world. Perhaps, when ( _if_ ) he recovered, he would let her show him the ropes around town; perhaps he, in return, could help her with her own problem of being too weak to attempt the more dangerous areas near the city.

Maybe if Moira had been a more reliable witness in other aspects of life, Amari would have attended closer to her repeated vague warnings about the stranger; then again, she might not have. Amari's need was great enough that she would have taken on much bigger risks than this for the possibility of a ticket out of Megaton.


	6. The Mask Slips

_**Author's Note: If you have a pitchfork, now's when you'll want to be sharpening it. That is all.**_

* * *

Word spread quickly about the man lying unconscious in the clinic, although Church, to his credit, refused to allowed gawkers to linger within, chasing them away with a sharp word. Thus rebuffed, they came up to the Craterside Supply instead, one by one, carrying their questions with them.

"Who is he?"

"Did'ya shoot 'im?"

"Is it true Silver's dead?"

Amari did her best to tell what she knew without revealing the secret of the money she'd plundered from the dead woman. What they wanted was a _story_ , one that they could tell and retell in the dull evenings to come, and so she told one. Flavored with self-deprecating humor, mystery, and detail, she described her ill-advised approach and the conversation she'd heard between the two strangers. By and large, they were confused about the same point that she was.

"What did he mean with all that stuff about 'personality routines' and 'factory reset'?"

"I don't know," she answered, again and again. "Your guess is as good as mine."

Scratching their heads, but appreciating the departure from "business as usual," they each left in their turn, some inviting Amari up to the bar for a another retelling in exchange for free drinks. She smiled and shook her head. She hadn't set foot in the saloon in months, making her the only person in town who never did, other than Moira and a couple of strict teetotallers among the Children of Atom. She was determined to stay out of Moriarty's way for the remainder of her stay in Megaton. As it turned out, this was easier said than done.

At around 6:30, when the flood of curiosity-seekers (not to mention real customers) had slowed to a trickle, she was half-asleep on her stool and lacking only the energy to go lock the door and get ready for bed. Moira had long-since dragged the eyebot carcass into her room, spending most of the day in there and emerging only to haggle prices for a new repair job: the Stahls' tiny refrigeration unit had failed and needed work, and Moira claimed to have the right parts for it. Amari was on the verge of closing up - a little earlier than usual, true, but the day had been long enough already - when the door opened again, revealing one of the last people she wanted to see.

"Hello, darlin'. I think you and me have somethin' to discuss."

"We're closed, Moriarty." Wide awake in an instant, she said this loudly, hoping against hope that Moira was sober and alert enough to hear the alarm in her voice from her bedroom. Not taking her eyes off of him, Amari reached one hand down to make sure of the release for the sawed-off shotgun beneath the counter. Yep, it was there. Not that she had the guts, speed, or skill to use it. "But I suppose I can make one more sale. What can I do for you today?"

He cut directly to the chase. "I heard you were the last to see that poor colleen o' mine alive. Heard you saw to her last rites. That's nice. You didn't happen to find any caps or drugs on her by any chance, did you now?"

"You heard wrong." She hadn't mentioned the burial to anybody, so she assumed that he (or one of his cat's paws) had already been to Springvale and back. "She'd been dead a while before I found her. House was rifled through. The only drugs she had were already in her veins. I buried her, true, but I didn't get anything out of it. I did it because it was the right thing to do."

"A saint, you are. You know, Amari, I like you in spite of the trouble and embarrassment you've caused me. You didn't fit in our little town, but by God, you're makin' it fit you. That takes some kind of grit. So I'm going to give you one more chance. Give me the caps you stole from her stinkin' corpse, and I'll let you trip-trap on your merry way. I'll even forgive that business with our contract. We'll be square."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She gripped edge of the the counter with both hands, hoping to conceal their trembling. She didn't know if the lie sounded convincing or not, but tried to look him in the eye as if she was confident.

"Amari, Amari, Amari… Miss Wilder, if you like. Let's be direct. I don't really want to hurt you. You keep our local madwoman busy, you have this store open for regular business hours for once, and you give the local drunks something to talk about. People like you, too. Enough that a few would look hard at me for making you disappear, especially that idiot sheriff."

"I have nothing for you, Moriarty. And don't… don't call me that. I'm just Amari."

He stared at her, taken aback. She found herself eying the knife on his belt. The blade was eight inches long, very sharp, and roughly serrated on one side. She knew he was capable of cutting her throat before she'd even managed to release the shotgun from its hiding place. Then he laughed, making her jump at the sound.

"Look at you, pissing yourself in fear, and still saying 'no.' Alright. Let me sweeten the deal. I'll tell you what I know about your dear ol' dad in exchange for… oh, say, 300 caps. Which I know you have right now. That, and I'll continue to extend my gracious 'protection' over your oh-so-soft vaultie skin. _You'll know what you need to know, and you'll get to live_. That's my best offer, sweetheart. Take it, or you'll be sorry."

Amari found that she was more angry than scared, and snapped back. "You don't understand. That's not good currency to me. I don't _care_ where he went. He's responsible for his own decisions and I've got my own problems to deal with. And I can take care of myself, thank you very much. You'll extort nothing from me."

His face showed irritation mixed with open surprise. "That's cold, Amari. And immensely stupid. Well… watch your back out there, and don't come cryin' to me when your next walkabout ends badly."

And then he was gone. She got up on shaking legs, slammed the bolt home, and locked the chain for good measure, before slumping against the door. Moira came out from the next room, an open bottle in one hand and a pistol in the other.

"Did you hear all that, Moira?"

"Every word. You've got some _chutzpah_. Want a drink?"

She thought about it. "Yeah. That sounds like a great idea."

They worked their way through the bottle. After a couple of drinks, Amari found her tongue. She told Moira the truth she'd been sitting on for all these months. Moira accepted the confession in stride, offering neither absolution nor judgment, but listening and continuing to pour more whiskey.

Sometime before the bottom completely fell out of her memories of the night, she was conscious of trying to extract a promise from Moira.

"So… if he comes… when he comes back and I'm gone… you gotta tell him. _Promise_. Just tell him. Tell him I'm sorry. Y'don't hafta tell him it's mostly his fault. He's smart. He'll get that. But you can tell him I'm sorry. For that day and everything else." She poured herself the last half-shot from the bottle, knocking an empty glass off the table and shattering it in the process. "Oops, sorry. I know! I'll put it all in writing. Gimme a pen and paper…"

"You can do that tomorrow." Moira got up to find a broom and dustpan for the glass. Amari watched her, screwing up her eyes and trying to see what she was thinking. Her eyes felt weird and it was hard to focus. Was she disgusted? Angry? Confused?

"D'you hate me now, Moira?" she mumbled from behind half-closed eyes.

"Hate you? No. I get it. It's none of my business how you handle your own crisis. There's no real harm done. And it's objectively interesting. I might even write you up as a case study in my upcoming monograph, 'Coping Mechanisms in the Wasteland.' I'll change your name of course. Again." She moved close again, putting a cool bottle of water in her hand. "Get that down. It occurs to me that I've just let a skinny girl with no tolerance drink… a whole lot. Had you _ever_ had alcohol before?"

"Jus' once. In the vault. For my… my birthday. Not this much, though."

"Then I'm sorry in advance for the morning you're going to have. You can be the second person to test out my latest hangover cure."

"It's alright. This is a nice break. I see why you do it every day. A person could really get used to this feeling."

"Mmhm. It's time for bed, okay? Please don't break your neck on the stairs."

* * *

The next morning - well, _late_ morning - found her achy and ill, but down in the clinic once more all the same, delivering the promised fifty caps, plus ten more for another day's monitoring.

"Has there been any change?" she called out to Church in the next room, checking for herself. The man looked no different to her. A search of the pockets on his armored coat had revealed nothing new - no markers of his identity, no money, and nothing personal - only a few practical items. He had been travelling light, that was for sure.

The doctor hadn't bothered to come out from behind his terminal, tucked away down the hallway. "Nope."

"How long can he stay like this, without food or water?"

He shrugged indifferently. "Don't know, don't care. Obviously not forever."

"Is there anything you can do to rehydrate him?"

"Not unless you've got a fortune of IV fluids stashed away somewhere."

She couldn't conceal her anger at his apathy. "Why am I paying you again?"

"I don't know. Why don't you just take him home if you think you can babysit better? Free up a bed down here for someone who actually has a chance."

"I _would_ , but Moira said he's not allowed in her house. Won't say why, either."

A day passed without significance. And another. And another. Between paying Church, improving her gear, and investing in some radaway, Amari spent not only her wages, but also the hundred she'd skimmed off of the top of her buried windfall. She hadn't counted on being restricted to town for so long, and now regretted not just bringing the whole bag with her. But she suspected that Moriarty was watching her closely, and she was afraid to leave the relative protection of the walls, venturing out only as far as the gates to meet the caravans and accept Moira's shipments on her behalf.

She was frustrated with the stranger, and close to giving up hope. The doctor was right, of course: no one could survive for long like this, even if they were practically _hibernating_ like this guy was. It was confusing. He was cool to the touch - a steady 96 degrees - and his respirations had slowed to a crawl. Nothing effected any change, not even the adrenaline she bought and administered in desperation on the morning of the fourth day. There was a slight blip in his vitals - a jump in the snail's pace of his heart-rate - but it resolved within minutes.

"What _are_ you?" she asked the man. Church overheard the question, but only grunted without looking up from his magazine.

"It's time for you to pay for the day, vaultie," he called back. "If you ask me, though, it's time we gave up on this experiment. He's not getting any better."

"What are you proposing instead?" she snapped. "It's not like anything we've given him has done anything at all. We could have ignored him for four days and had the same results."

He answered promptly, "Smothering him and freeing up the bed. It's the right thing to do, even the merciful thing. You need to stop worrying about a brain-dead stranger, and start worrying about yourself. He's not going to forget about that money, you know."

She hoped he heard the disgust in her voice. "I'll pay you. I just… I just have to go do some work first. It'll have to wait until dark. But you'll get your money then."

There was no response. He obviously didn't care what she thought of him. Another peremptory check for reflexive movement, and she was about to leave, when he spoke up from the doorframe where he'd been glaring down at the man. "I think I can begin to see why ol' Moira's got the willies around this one. He's not natural. You know that, right?"

"He's just a person in need of help, Church. Try to remember that."

Many hours later, wearing all of the protection she had, and with Moira's jury-rigged cloaking device ( _stealth boy_ , she reminded herself) strapped to her arm, she prepared to sidle out of town.

"It's got _maybe_ thirty minutes of juice in it," her employer warned. "Be careful. It doesn't make you totally invisible, remember… just sort of blurry and reflective. The darkness will help, but people can still hear you. Animals can still smell you."

"Thanks. I'll just use it to get out of town, and turn it off once I'm out of sight of the gates. Save it for the return trip." She sighed. "I'm sorry, Moira. I'll start thinking seriously about leaving town after that guy dies or wakes up. It's obvious I shouldn't stay here. I've become a liability to you."

Moira didn't deny it, but contemplated her close-bitten fingernails for a second, before shaking her head. "Just so we're clear: you know you _did_ steal from Moriarty, right?"

"Technically, I stole from _Silver_ , who was already dead. But yes. I know how he sees it."

The other woman nodded. "Okay. My advice? Go up to that saloon right now, approach the man in public and tell him that you're ready to reveal _exactly_ where that money is. Offer him another fifty caps of apology money - I'll advance you Friday's pay. Say something cringing and flattering in front of the crowd and then slink out and come straight back here. We'll drink to being cowards, and you'll hopefully be free to explore again without looking over your shoulder constantly. You can't win a game like this against him and it'd be better just to forfeit before you get hurt."

Amari listened, but shook her head before Moira was even done. "No, I can't. Don't you see? That money's my ticket out of here. My insurance. I'm depending on it. I _can't_ just give it away."

Forty minutes later, lying at the bottom of a dry culvert and trying not to breathe too loudly, so as not to give away her position, she had cause to wish she _had_ gone with Moira's plan. Adrenaline - and the stealth boy - had gotten her this far, but she wouldn't be making another madcap sprint tonight, even to get to town. The bulge in her outer pocket was only slight comfort - yes, she'd held on to the caps when she'd heard the first shot, ricocheting off the bricks of the fireplace she'd been digging under, and even after the second bullet had found its mark, but they would do her no good if she was discovered here, or bled out in the meantime.

She frowned. _Was_ that a possibility? Her leg had hurt - for a few agonizing seconds - and then it had gone completely numb, forgotten in the rush to escape from the person or persons who had come for her. Now it was hurting again, throbbing in time with her heartbeat. She reached questing hand down to probe at the hole, just below the knee, but the dry leaves crunched under her as she moved and she flinched backwards.

There was blood on her hand, just visible in the fading light, and certainly blood on her pant leg, which was plastered to her throbbing leg. She found herself thinking irrelevantly of the sewing and the laundry she now needed to do - these had been her _good_ pants, and almost clean before today. What a waste.

 _Stop thinking about laundry!_ The voice of alarm in the back of her mind was screaming at her to do _something_ other than lie there - fix the leg, ready a weapon to defend herself (she'd dropped the bat back in Springvale, so it would have to be the hunting knife she carried in her boot), or start crawling toward town while the stealth boy was still working. The rest of her was content to tune out this voice, however, and to stay absolutely still where she was, admiring the first stars of the night through the slight distortion of the stealth field.

There hadn't been many injuries of this sort in the vault, and all of her theoretical knowledge assumed that she wasn't the one needing treatment. It also assumed a clean room, adequate light, and tools and medicine on hand. She had no contingency for this situation, least of all for a scenario where there were armed pursuers close at hand. And she could hear the rumble of voices now, not far away, but not close enough that she could hear what they were saying. There were at least two, both male. She wondered if they were Moriarty's men, or if she'd stumbled into a totally different kind of trouble - the raiders from the school, perhaps, out on an evening stroll. She supposed it didn't matter at this point.

She closed her eyes and thought back to the only experience she had with anything like this. It had been more than three years ago, before the GOAT exam had made her lot in life official, and she'd been finishing up her volunteer hours in the clinic, helping Jonas to catalogue their supplies. It had been an unusually slow afternoon, with only one drop-in - an older maintenance worker with a toenail fungus. After ticking the last box on the inventory clipboard, she'd been about to clock out to go home and do her homework when a newly-appointed Officer Park, who was then barely twenty years old, hopped into the room, cursing.

Jonas had sent her to get James, who'd been finishing up an obstetrics exam for Anna Wilkins' second pregnancy. By the time she returned with him, Park had been pantless and red-faced with embarrassment, with a long, bloody graze down his right thigh. In his mumbled explanation to the doctor, she caught the words, "...accidentally discharged my weapon…" and had to bite her tongue so as not to laugh at the cocky man's comeuppance, keeping a smooth demeanor as she observed and handed the others the tools they needed.

She wasn't laughing now. It felt as if someone had taken the edge of a frying pan, hot off the fire, and pressed it to her leg. The first thing Jonas had done for the unlucky officer was administer med-x, the strong painkiller they kept under lock and key in the cupboard. Amari had nothing of the sort with her, only a pathetically-small amount of gauze, a tiny roll of bandages, and a miniature bottle of antiseptic. She had fully intended to buy a stimpak for emergencies, but hadn't yet gotten around to that investment; well, she had the money now… she would go get one from Church… just as soon as she got up.

It was getting harder to focus on what needed to be done, and she forgot even about the danger of discovery as her consciousness narrowed to two things: there was pain and there was tiredness, and somehow the first didn't cancel out the second. She let her eyes close on the last pale streaks of sunset, and gave in to the exhaustion. A little rest, and then she'd be on her way.

* * *

Voices, very close now. Young children. She rolled over and saw two girls, nine or ten years old, whispering furtively nearby. Both wore vault suits, and could have been twins at a glance, both with long, dark hair, with one wearing it drawn into a ponytail and one plaited into braids. The one with braids had her back to Amari and seemed to be crying.

"You kids need to get out of here," Amari said in consternation, groaning as she jogged her leg, not noticing that it was now dripping blood on tile instead of dirt. "It's not safe."

"Shh, be quiet. You'll get us in trouble," the girl with braids snapped, before turning back to her companion, "Let me see it, Amata."

"No, no, no… it _hurts_. I want to go to the clinic," the other girl whined. "Look, my finger's _bleeding_!"

"Then we'll _both_ catch it, they'll take the knives away, and we'll _never_ get to play together again. Is that what you want?"

"No…"

"Then let me see it. I've watched my dad do this a hundred times. I can clean it and sew it up, no problem." Now Amari could see the first aid kit - pilfered from the cafeteria, she thought - sprawled open beside them.

She remembered this incident now. They'd been pretending the stolen kitchen knives were swords to play knights and dragons with. One had slipped, cutting Amata's finger deeply. Amari told little-Amata, as sternly as she could muster, "Just go to the clinic, kid. You're going to have that scar for the rest of your life, and James'll do a better job of it than _she_ will."

"Don't listen to the grown-up, Amata. She can't even take care of herself." Little-Marilyn looked straight at Amari now, a scolding expression on her young face, "And lady, you need to wake up."

"Can I go to the clinic here first?" she mumbled. "I could use some help." She knew she didn't belong in the vault, but the thought of relief so near was impossible to ignore.

"My dad is gone and Jonas is dead. Unless you want _my_ help?" The girl held up a needle and thread. "I like to practice on whomever I can. I'm going to leave this vault someday, you know."

" _No_. And life out there's not all it's cracked up to be, I promise you. You're not missing out on much."

"I'll do better than _you_ , grown-up." Amari flinched as the girl snapped her fingers in her face. "Wake up, _now_."

* * *

Amari opened her eyes to find that it was now full night, with stars peeking out in between the swaths of cloud in the black expanse above her. There was no moon, and no distortion. The stealth boy was played out. _That was a weird dream_ , she thought. Her second thought was, _I'm cold_. With the sun down, temperatures in November routinely dropped to the forties overnight, although Moira said that this fall had been warmer than most. With all of the gear she wore, she never really noticed the chill, even in the early mornings. But now, lying on the cold ground with the night's dew settling into her clothes, she found herself shivering, teeth chattering involuntarily. Her lower leg was a hot bar of iron, but the rest of her was numb and sluggish. It didn't matter now if the men who had shot her were waiting for her on the road to Megaton or if they'd given up the search. She needed to move.

But first, the leg. It was dark - too dark to see - and she had no source of light. _Yet another time when I wish I still had my Pip-Boy_. What blood there was had dried, and the cloth was stuck onto her leg as if it had been drenched in glue, tacky and stiff. From the feel of it under her fumbling fingers, she guessed that the bullet had glanced off the bone and raked a six-inch furrow through the skin and muscle on the outside of her leg before exiting. For the first time, she got past the panicked mental refrain of _I've been shot!_ and moved onto _This could be worse_. Rather than try to unstick the rough fabric from the wound, she decided to leave it on for now rather than trying to clean it _in situ_. She didn't even have any water with her, although she remembered packing a quart bottle before she set out for Springvale. It had been lost in the initial escape, she assumed, and she had no idea where it had ended up.

Standing wasn't all that bad after the initial dizziness passed, although her left leg resisted carrying her full weight. Walking, however - heck, even climbing out of the ditch - was a challenge. It was _so_ dark. The vault had never been this dark - there was always emergency lighting on somewhere, even in the middle of the night. Her feet seemed to find every loose stone on the path and every fallen tree branch there was to trip over; a few falls, and it was bleeding again, but slowly, she thought. Still, getting up after every fall took energy she didn't have, and took longer every time. In the end, a walk that _should_ have been over in fifteen minutes took almost an hour. There were no enemies, either human or animal, and this was lucky; she couldn't have stood against a mole rat in her current condition.

Finally, there was the faint beacon of the exterior lights at the gate, gleaming off of Deputy Weld's smooth dome. The robot said nothing as she limped by, even though she asked it the time in passing. It wasn't programmed to answer most questions. There was no one to be seen on the paths or walkways inside, not even Simms or a couple of last-call drunks stumbling home; she guessed that it was after midnight, but couldn't be sure.

A stop at the clinic - to deliver the fee for the stranger's board and to buy a stimpak - and then she could walk (or crawl if she had to) up the ramp to home. Wake up Moira if she couldn't handle things at that point on her own. The woman had been after her to get "seriously injured" for weeks, after all, and in Amari's opinion, this absolutely counted.

Forgetting to anticipate Church's anger at such a late visit, she pushed open the door and stepped aside. The light was unexpectedly bright, and she closed her eyes against it, inhaling sharply when she heard a familiar and unwelcome voice.

"Well, well, well, isn't this a pleasant surprise! You were out there so long I feared the worst."

She squinted at Moriarty, who was standing next to the stranger on the table while a silent Church looked on, and she immediately tried to backpedal, going for the door behind her. Even on her best day, however, he was much faster than she was and crossed the room in a flash, holding it shut while he set the deadbolt.

"Don't be leaving us so soon, my dear. You have something for me?" Without waiting for an answer, he reached one invasive hand into her pocket and pulled out the bag of caps, now flecked with dried blood. She grabbed for it automatically, but he intercepted her wrist with an iron grip and pulled her further into the room. "Come on in, now. You came to visit your mysterious friend; come visit him." He measured the weight of the bag in an expert hand and tipped her a knowing wink. "It's a little _light_ , Amari. But we can work out the rest eventually."

The stranger was exactly where he'd been that morning, and she looked over him dully, resting both hands on the exam table to take the weight off of her leg. She was conscious of Moriarty's eyes on her back, and looked up pleadingly at Church across the table from her.

"I… _was_ going to pay you, Doc, but I don't have any money anymore. Please give me until tomorrow."

He dismissed her with a jerk of of his head. "Whatever. Just sit down so I can take a look at that." When she didn't move, he turned to Moriarty, speaking flatly and calmly, "You got what you wanted. I'll notify you of any change with _him_. I assume you don't actually want this girl to die?"

"Not yet," Moriarty said, chuckling with good humor born of his petty victory. "Knock yourself out. Ta-ta!"

When he had gone, Amari stayed where she was, breathing deeply and trying not to pass out. This wasn't how she'd wanted the evening to play out, not at all.

Church took a step toward her. "I told you, just sit down. When did that happen?"

She spat her refusal back at him, backing away from the table and almost falling, "I don't want your help. I don't trust you at all. You _work_ for that man."

"You don't have to trust me to accept help. And _everybody_ works for him in the end."

"Not me. Not Moira. She can handle this. I just have to get up there." She retreated to the door, fumbling for the handle. "Don't kill him. I _will_ be back tomorrow, with caps."

"I won't," he growled, making her pause in the doorway. "Whatever you believe about me, I'm not as bad as all that. He moved today. Hands and feet. Tracking eye movements. He's improving, somehow. And I _didn't_ mention that to Moriarty."

 _Hey, that's good news_ , she thought distractedly, putting one foot in front of another to ascend the last hundred feet to home. _It almost makes up for this day I've had_. There was the ramp and the railing - _finally_ , something solid to lean on - and she pulled herself along, using her arms to give her legs a break. _Just a little farther_. _And a little more_. _And a little more..._

* * *

A hundred feet? No. The distance between the vault door and the mouth of the cave was much less - maybe fifty, maybe less, straight through a man-made tunnel of rock. Her leg felt whole now and it took only a few seconds to reach the light. Again, she stood on the mountainside, the entrance to the vault behind her. This time around, she didn't worry about armed pursuers from the vault behind her. She knew no one was coming. Instead, she sat down on a ridge, admiring the sunrise before her. She could just see Megaton in the distance, the metal bars glowing red in the morning light. Another person joined her, a woman in vault-blue.

"Hi Mari. Are you here to pick up where I left off?" Amari reached up and smoothed the other's tangled, matted hair back away from her face, trying not to notice the ruin that Officer Wolfe's bullet had made of the left side of her head. "You need to fix this first, girl. You'll scare people. You're scaring _me_."

"Is that better?" Her friend turned to look at her, two eyes gleaming mischievously out of an unmarred face.

Amari was relieved and smiled back. "Yeah. It is. You were always the pretty one. So, anyway… here's the deal. I have no idea where your dad is - sorry about that - but he's out there, somewhere. You'll find him. Moira's crazy, but you two are going to get along really well - you're practically the same person. If you don't mind shooting people, she'll sell you a gun really cheap. She's been after me to buy one for weeks." She paused for breath, thinking. "Moriarty's bad news. Watch out for him. And that man down in the clinic? If he wakes up, he'll need a friend." She stopped again. Marilyn was smiling at her, in that old aggravating way of hers, as if Amari was missing something obvious. "I think that's everything. Leg's hurt, but not too bad, I don't think. You'll like this life. It was made for you. I'm sorry I tried to take it for myself. That was wrong of me." _What else?_ "I don't know why I did it, except that I couldn't be me and stay sane, and I wanted you to be there with me." Tears threatened to fall now, and she swallowed to push them back. "You'll be fine out there. Much better than I was."

"Amata." Her voice was gentle, chiding.

"That's not my name anymore."

"Amata, I'm not going to live your life for you. That's not even an option, regardless of what mental gymnastics you try to squeeze yourself into. I'm dead. You're not."

Why was she refusing? "It's _yours_ , Mari. Do you think _I_ could do this? Survive this long? This was always your dream, not mine. I don't deserve it. I don't even want it."

"It _was_ my dream, but not anymore. Now it's your reality. You've lasted this long on your own because you do have strengths of your own. You can keep doing that. You _have_ to."

She burst out, frustrated now, "The only way I could make it was by pretending to be you. I told everybody I was you. Everything I did, I asked myself 'What would Mari do?' I went through the motions until that became habit." There. She'd said it. She studied Marilyn out of the corner of her eye, trying to gage her reaction. "Well, aren't you mad?"

"I'm just glad you survived, Amata. Since I didn't."

"No. That's not… that's not right… you're here now."

"We're in your sad, mixed-up mess of a mind, silly. We didn't both get out. Bad luck."

"It wasn't bad luck, though." She let herself begin to remember that day, just a little, before it became too painful. "I slowed us down. I wouldn't shoot when you told me to shoot. I got you killed."

Marilyn shrugged. "Yeah, so you choked. Fighting's not your thing. But that's water under the bridge. My dad's to blame. Hell, your dad's to blame. You're not. I'm the one that dragged you into my stupid escape attempt, remember?"

Amari wasn't ready to relinquish her guilt just yet. "I killed Officer Wolfe. And Officer Park. I didn't hate either of them before that day."

"They would have killed you."

"That doesn't make me feel any better."

Marilyn shrugged. "I can't help you there. Hey, when you get a chance, do me a favor: tell my dad I love him."

Amari wiped a sleeve across her eyes, sniffling in earnest now. "He's not going to want to hear that from me. He really isn't."

"Tell him anyway. Goodbye, Amata, and good luck." She stood to leave.

Before she could walk away, Amari hugged Marilyn, not noticing or not caring that the damage from the bullet was back, and that her best friend was very obviously dead, decaying before her eyes. "Goodbye, Mari."

She watched the other woman retrace her steps, heading back into the tunnel toward the vault and disappearing into the gloom. When the footsteps had died away, she headed down the slope, toward Megaton, ready to resume a life that she hoped she was ready to call her own.

* * *

"Wake up, Amari."

"Hmmm." Back on the hill, she'd felt good - pain-free and comfortable - but now every discomfort demanded attention. There was the bitter taste on her tongue, a deep ache in her leg, though somewhat muted, and she was terribly thirsty. "Go 'way, Mari."

"It's Moira. Open your eyes." Her employer was standing over her, frowning. "I told you you'd lose if you tried to play games with Moriarty, didn't I? You almost died last night."

"I made it back here, didn't I?" she croaked. "Water?"

"No, you didn't. Maximus found you at the bottom of the ramp. You'd barely gotten ten feet from his door before you collapsed." She held a bottle to her lips and let her drink half of it before she took it away.

Amari tried to remember what had happened after leaving the clinic, but found it impossible. "More. Th' fuck is Maximus?"

"Did you think his first name was 'Doc'? I know you don't like him, but he did make sure you got here." She capped the bottle and set it aside. "Give it a minute to settle. I've cleaned up enough vomit for today."

Amari noticed a nearly-empty bottle feeding an IV in her arm. She blinked, trying to keep the panic out of her voice, "Please tell me that's saline, not just water."

"Give me _some_ credit, please. Yes. It is. I try to keep a small store of medical supplies on hand."

"D'you have anymore? Only the stranger downstairs probably needs it even more than I did."

"No. And even if I did, I wouldn't waste it on a Cour-... on someone like _him_." She looked troubled. "I've got a backlog of repair work to get to. You need anything before I disappear for six hours? Med-x? A snack?"

Amari shook her head. "Just leave the water where I can reach it, please. The med-x too, I guess. I might want it in a little bit."

"Do you mind if I play the radio really loudly? I want to be able to hear it while I work."

Left alone with her thoughts and regrets, Amari tried to consider what she needed to do next. She seemed to have made no progress toward any long-term goal in recent weeks, and now she didn't even have her crutch of an identity anymore. She still didn't know what it meant to be someone named Amari, but she did know that she didn't need to pretend to be Marilyn anymore. It never seriously occurred to her to go back to being Amata. As far as she was concerned, Amata had died that day as well, when her father raised a hand against her and her people tried to kill her. Marilyn and Amata were helpful ghosts, and nothing more, and Amari could - theoretically - be anybody she wanted, without any baggage. At that moment, the radio interrupted these meditations with Three Dog's always too-boisterous ramblings. "Not too long ago, I reported that a cat recently left Vault 101. His name is James. Good guy… and, I kid you not, he came to visit yours truly right here in the studio!"

Amari frowned. This was a reminder that there was one more thing she would have to do - tell James Wilder in person that his daughter was dead, and carry Marilyn's last message to him. Or maybe she didn't have to. He would assume that Marilyn was still alive and well in the vault if no one said otherwise. He might live and die without ever knowing the truth; it was better not to know, surely? Amari could disappear into the world - maybe even accept Deacon's invitation to go to Boston - and defer James Wilder's tragedy for a time. Maybe forever.

The radio personality's next words cut that fantasy off, however, and set her back on a reluctant course forward. "But James, if you're listening... this just came across my desk from a caravan out of Megaton: your kid's out, man, and she misses you. So you might want to find her before she gets swallowed up and spit out. The rest of you good guys and gals, give the kid from 101 a leg up if you see her, okay? Help her get where she needs to go."

 _So much for no harm done_.


	7. Farewell, Megaton

_**Author's Note: A major character death tag on this fic as a whole seemed redundant at best and misleading at worst, but for the sake of transparency, I'm letting you know now that there are two more coming up in this chapter.**_

* * *

" _Lesson number one: sometimes a leader has to make unpopular decisions. It's not about what you, me, or any other individual wants, but about what's best for the entire community in the long run. It's better to be feared - even hated - than loved. Can you do that?"_

" _I don't know, father."_

" _Here, on the job, you will address me as 'Overseer.'"_

" _Yes, sorry. Overseer. I don't know if I can do that."_

" _We must be decisive and pragmatic. The people look to us for solutions, not sympathy. You make a choice and then you pursue it to the end, so as not to appear weak. Don't second-guess yourself. Never publicly admit that you were wrong. Understand?"_

" _I think so. But-"_

" _But what, Amata?"_

" _What about when circumstances change and the old ways don't work anymore?"_

" _It's my job - and, someday, yours - to prevent that from happening. That's our highest duty, our inviolable principle. Only misery can come of breaking it. Believe me, I've learned that to my cost. Hopefully you won't have to."_

* * *

Try as she might, Amari could never get completely warm at night, no matter how many blankets she found to pile on top of her. The Craterside Supply, like every other building in Megaton, had no heating besides an occasional cookfire. _Needed_ no heating, as Moira pointed out; in this stricken climate, temperatures rarely dipped below freezing, even in the wintertime. Amari missed the climate-controlled air of the vault, however. Once the sun stopped baking the corrugated tin of the uninsulated walls and roof, the atmosphere inside went from stuffy to cold in about an hour.

It was now late December. A dreary Christmas had come and gone with scant ceremony, and they were coming up upon the new year soon; if all went well, Amari expected to be long gone by the time spring had arrived in Megaton. She only lacked a full complement of supplies for the road, having suffered a devastating financial setback on that catastrophic night six weeks before.

Amari shivered in the early morning chill as she peeled off her cleanish clothes and plucked her mud-splattered work outfit from the heap where she'd dropped them the night before. She ran a hand automatically over the raised, pink scar on her leg, still marvelling at her close escape; it had gone numb and tingly over the bone from whatever the bullet had done to her nerves, but the pain and bruising was all but gone, with only a fading splash of yellow lingering. It had been a novel experience, and one she hoped never to repeat. She'd never been hurt before, or at least nothing worse than nicks and scratches from childish roughhousing, generally the consequences of Marilyn's hairbrained plans. She smiled at these memories, even as she felt a stab of residual regret and grief, beginning to be somewhat tempered by the passage of time - over four months now. Given the same set of circumstances, she knew that Marilyn would have left Megaton long since, presumably after staging a coup to destroy Moriarty and liberating the town from his influences, and probably defusing the bomb in their midst as well. Even in her most grandiose daydreams, Amari didn't have that kind of force of will. She was, however, ready to see something other than these walls and their immediate surroundings, and more than ready to be out of the saloon-keeper's greedy reach. She _had_ to make a clean break from these people who had willfully consented to being governed by corruption.

 _I need to move on_. This was her last thought before going to sleep at night, and her first thought upon waking up, a constant mantra of resolutions and vague plans: _It's time for me to go. Get to Rivet City. Find James. Then I'll be free to discover a… - how had Deacon put it? - a_ raison d'être _of my own. I can be myself, whoever that turns out to be._

At least she wouldn't have to travel alone, at least not for the immediate future. For all that he frustrated and sometimes frightened her, and frequently gave her cause to question her own ethical motivations, she had gained a very powerful ally in the man they called Richard. As guilty as she felt for asking someone with serious brain damage to fight her battles for her, she genuinely did not know what else to do with him. She paid him, of course, with money that he seemed totally uninterested in; she asked him for his perspective on things, and he gave no answer. Without an occasional nudge to action, he seemed permanently stuck in place.

He was waiting for her outside, as he always was in the morning. In reluctant concession to Moira's refusal to let him stay in her house, and out of fear of housing him anywhere near the saloon, she had arranged to pay Walter a pittance for the privilege of cot-space in the water purification plant on the level above. As far as Amari could tell, however, Richard needed very little sleep - no matter how early she rose, he was always up before her, dressed and ready to go.

"Richard, would you be interested in coming down to the river with me today? If we land a mirelurk, you can have half the caps. The Stahls will give us a plate of it too." Amari watched the man carefully, looking - even _hoping_ \- for some sign of resentment, annoyance, or disagreement. Even a contrary answer, something as simple as "I don't like shellfish" would have been a relief. It was hard to tell what he was thinking with his eyes concealed behind the damn glasses, but his face remained as serene as ever as he nodded his agreement. She wanted to shout at him to show a little spirit. He _could_ , for instance, argue that he deserved more than 50% of the cut, since he'd be the one pulling the crab to shore and shooting the damn thing. He _could_ point out that she was a useless hindrance in the waste, good for little more than announcing their next destination, his inferior in almost every respect. These truths were obvious. An ordinary human being - especially one of Richard's extraordinary talents - would have made these objections long ago. But Richard was lacking in self-interest, drive, and autonomy; though his body had recovered fully, his mind clearly had not. Even though she was the primary beneficiary of his unquestioning helpfulness, it frustrated and saddened Amari to find no spark of volition or independence in him. She spoke and he acted, and that in itself was bizarre. No one in their right mind would ever listen to her.

As she ran through her checklist of what they would need, the sight of Leo Stahl carrying a crate of vegetables in from the gate reminded her of one of her regular duties. "Can you please help me carry Moira's shipment in first? It's waiting by the gate with the caravan." She hated giving him orders, preferring instead to couch them as polite requests. Watching him pick up a stack of boxes - several times what her thin arms could manage on a single trip - she walked slowly back up to the shop, wondering (and not for the first time) what would have happened if Moriarty had been the one to take charge of his recovery. If that amoral man's voice had been the one to take command of him, the consequences could have been extremely dire… for the truth was, Richard was objectively _dangerous_ \- and just _how_ dangerous she hadn't told anybody, least of all Moira, though she suspected that the other woman knew already.

Being shot had done nothing to make Amari less skittish around firearms; though it _should_ , perhaps _,_ have moved her to learn to defend herself, it had only made her more adamant in her refusal to carry a gun. She kept a light melee weapon on her at all times, along with a utility knife, but still couldn't imagine using either on another human being. Still, acting out of a sense of responsibility, she had purchased what felt like an appropriate weapon for Richard - a standard hunting rifle - and asked Simms to test his skill at the range one morning, about a week after he'd woken up.

The two men had returned less than an hour later, with the sheriff looking spooked and irritable. Before returning to his station, he had muttered to Amari, voice pitched low so as to shut Richard out of the conversation, "There's nothin' I can teach him. _Don't get on his bad side_." Soon, she learned exactly what he meant by this. Richard, it seemed, could wield any gun provided to him like an extension of his own body, hitting targets accurately and very quickly, reloading with astounding speed. She didn't like to admit it out loud, but he was a living weapon himself - and, like it or not, Amari was the one pointing him at things and people. That day in the Super-Duper Mart, two weeks after he had first woken up, was one that she'd never forget.

Moira had sent them there, of course, to scavenge for food and medicine. Amari had initially resisted, pointing out - reasonably, she felt - that it would have been looted down to the copper wiring long ago, but her boss had been stubborn. So, they had gone. The shelves _were_ bare… but the whole dim, creepy place had been crawling with raiders. She had frozen, her eyes still trying to adjust to the lack of light, but Richard had _acted_. She hadn't even seen most of the fight - her automatic response to the gunfire had been to crouch down and cover her face - but when she opened her eyes, it was onto a mostly-silent room with only one person left standing. For a moment - a _long_ moment, and one that made her feel guilty even now - she saw not her one-time patient, but the monster of Moira's many vague warnings. Even as she watched, wanting to run like a prey animal runs before a hunter, but rooted to the spot in fear, he reloaded his gun with an effortless gesture and put an additional bullet into the only raider still moaning, a half-naked man clawing at a shattered arm. Soon, he too lay still, and Richard turned his attention to her, making her recoil.

"Are you hurt?" His voice was deep, pleasant, and always unexpected, she heard it so little.

She was so surprised by this - he'd asked a _question_ , a first for him - that she forgot her fear for a moment. "Me? No. I wasn't the one in a firefight. How about you?"

"I am undamaged. They were nothing." The coldness with which he dismissed the bodies strewn around him frightened her afresh, but if he noticed, he didn't say anything. They'd made a lot of money off of the booty from that slaughter, enough to get them closer to leaving, but it had still given her considerable pause. Ever since then, she'd watched him a little more closely. If he could act without direction once, then he could do it again, and possibly against an inappropriate target. Though if he _did_ , there was precious little she could do to stop him. Like the undetonated bomb at the bottom of the crater, he was an unknown quantity, and a potentially unstoppable force.

"Can you please wait out here, Richard? I need to take this receipt in and talk for a moment." She didn't think he cared one way or another, but it galled her to make him stay outside on Moira's account. On the other hand, she didn't want a fight on this morning, or on any of the few remaining mornings she intended to stay. Things between the two women had been strained of late, ever since Amari had informed her of her plans to leave. As if Moira was trying nonverbally to convince her to change her mind, she had made an sustained effort to appear level and agreeable, although she continued to make obscure remarks about Richard's trustworthiness. She was, however, forced to concede his helpfulness to Amari - and, by association, to Moira's own work. In the weeks since he'd begun to accompany her, Amari had achieved more concrete results that she had in all the months beforehand, accomplishing tasks much more easily than before.

Moira was awake, her tools and materials occupying every square inch of the kitchen table. She must have read some of Amari's pent-up feelings in her expression, and interrupted her own task to interject her views.

"Stop stressing so much, Amari. There are more important things to be concerned about. Like the mirelurk egg you promised to fetch me this week."

"Forget your damned egg," she groaned in frustration. "I know you don't care, but _I'm_ worried about him. He has no sense of agency, no volition, no initiative. I can't even get him to tell me his real _name_. All I get is a serial number. I have no idea what he would do if he was left to his own devices."

Moira let out a huffy breath, bent over Amari's former Pip-Boy with a tiny screwdriver and loosening a panel within, opening it to gain access to… something within. "That's normal for… _people_ like him. I _told_ you. You'll have to teach him those things."

"I can't teach him his name, Moira. I don't know it. Why were you so insistent that I call him Richard, anyway? You never explained."

She snorted. "Anything was better than X6-88. That would have attracted the wrong sort of attention." Eyes narrowed with concentration, she reconnected a tiny wire inside the device and closed it up with a smile of satisfaction. "Like I said, Rick - or Richard - Deckard is _perfect_ for him. Very _apropos._ "

Very annoyed now, she burst out, "What are you trying to tell me?"

Moira let out an aggrieved sigh. "It's from a _book_. Deacon would have gotten the reference, you know. Didn't you _read_ in that fancy vault of yours? _I_ would have."

Amari was in no mood to be baited. "I'm not Deacon, and you have a _lot_ of books. Just tell me what you know, Moira, _please_. Maybe it can help me help him. What does it matter, anyway? You're just being difficult."

Moira carried the Pip-Boy away and came back, empty handed, crossing her arms and rocking back on her heels nervously. "Okay. Whatever. He's never going to give you a _real_ name because he's never had one. I promise you. He may," she amended, brushing long tendrils of unwashed hair out of her face, " _someday_ , construct enough of a personality, develop enough of an ego to desire things like that. It depends on exactly what that mesmetron pulse did to his memories. If we're lucky, it was a clean rinse. If we're _not_ , then they're just submerged, and might surface at any moment." Slowly, as if she was dragging something out of herself by force, she went on, "If you're getting impatient, I have a suggestion."

"If you're going to tell me to abandon him in the waste again, Moira, so help me I'll-"

"No, that was uncharitable of me. Chalk it up to a knee-jerk reaction based on… ah, _experiences_ of my own. I've had a change of heart." She was calm despite Amari's outburst. "There's a man I know - name of Pinkerton - who can usually help… _people_ like him in similar circumstances. He knows how to create and impress a believable backstory onto their brains, offers a ready-made person to walk around in that well-trained shell. He lives near Rivet City." She sighed, drumming her fingers on the table. "I'll tell you how to get to him but you can't tell anybody about him, Amari. It's very important that his work remain secret. What you need to understand is that I'm a part of a group that needs to operate very _sub rosa_ in the Capital Wasteland. We can't go around telling people what we do or there'll be problems. Big, life-shattering problems. Understand?"

This was new and intriguing. Amari perked up her ears, listening intently. "You can trust me. Deacon and Tom, too?"

"Yes. They-" A jingling sound from the front of the shop cut her off mid-sentence, and she gave a silent order for Amari to go check it out. Impatient to hear the rest of the explanation, Amari stalked out to deal with the new customer, a farmer from the look - rough overalls caked in manure. She was suddenly thankful that she couldn't smell much of anything at the moment, courtesy of a recent cold. In a few minutes, she came back.

"You know how to midwive brahmin, Moira? Foster says one of his is having trouble."

"Ye-ahhhh… Church refuses to see animals, so I usually get roped into veterinary stuff, even though it's not my favorite thing. At least they let me have the placenta afterwards." Without explaining this peculiar comment, Moira went out to strike a deal with the man, and then returned to the back to pack up the things she needed. As she stuffed tools into her bag, she muttered to Amari. "We'll finish up… what we were talking about… tonight, alright? I should have told you as soon as you found him. Call me paranoid. I am. On an unrelated note, _are_ the two of you going to go to the river today? I really _would_ like to dissect a mirelurk egg tonight."

It had been on the tip of her tongue to request to accompany Moira to the farm - she would have liked to see the birth of a two-headed calf - but after quick internal deliberation, Amari decided to stick to her original plan for the day. She felt like she owed it to Moira for this declaration of transparency, especially since she'd be leaving her in the lurch soon. "Yeah, we'll get you your egg. Maybe an adult too. With those hooks you designed and Richard standing by with his rifle, it shouldn't be too hard to pull one to shore without it hurting us. You _will_ tell me-"

Moira interrupted her smoothly, handling her something made of glass, "Can you also grab a sample of the water for me? I like to check it every year or so to see if the radiation levels and microorganism count has changed at all. It doesn't, or not much, but I'm making records for the long-term."

Amari took the proffered test tube and stopper. "Sure, whatever. You won't change your mind about telling me, will you? I _need_ to know."

She got a weak smile and a cross-my-heart gesture in return. "Nope. We'll talk tonight. I'll christen you an unofficial member of the Railroad. We'll drink to it. I promise."

Richard was still waiting patiently outside, sitting on the stack of crates, but he had gained some company by the time she returned to him. Nova was up early as well... or maybe she hadn't been to bed yet, Amari considered, noticing that the woman was practically vibrating from Jet abuse, the whites of her eyes spidery red and bleary. She had one arm draped over the man's shoulder, and was cooing something nonsensical into his unresisting ear. For some reason, this upset her even more than Moira's idiosyncratic rudeness, and she snapped sharply.

"Nova! What are you _doing_? Leave him alone."

The blonde sneered at her, baring the blackened stumps of her rotted teeth. "Jus' 'cause you ain't getting any doesn't mean you get to keep this gorgeous halfwit to yourself. Frigid bitch, al'ays wrapped up in your goggles and gloves, like you're too delicate to touch the air around you…"

Amari didn't want to get into a petty squabble with the likes of Nova. "He's not a halfwit, Nova. And he might be too polite to say so, but he doesn't want the likes of you slobbering all over him. Just move on. Go eat some food. Get some sleep. _Please_."

"You think you're better than the rest of us, dontcha? You forget that I knew you when you couldn't roll over without pukin' or shittin'... I helped you then, you know. Felt sorry for you, even." Her voice raised into a pitched whine. "You messed up what we had up there when you forced your way out, y'know. And who d'you think th' Boss takes it out on?"

Repressing the whisper of guilt at the back of her mind, Amari was already walking away, followed by her silent guard, calling back over her shoulder in reply. "I'm sorry, but that's not my concern, Nova." Twenty minutes later, she had already forgotten about the confrontation, content to do the work she'd set herself with the company she had. Mentally, she had already left the town behind, and didn't much care anymore what problems she left behind.

A few hours later, they had accomplished everything they wanted to do. Lugging the carapace of a monstrous crab along a long stretch of uphill back to Megaton was an awkward job, even with the rough rope harness she'd fashioned for the two of them to drag it along. The mirelurk embryo, floating in a jar of grain alcohol, along with the water sample were tucked safely in her pack. The two of them were tired, dirty, and damp from the effort of wrestling the beast to shore, but they felt triumphant - or Amari did, anyway. Richard didn't seem to care one way or another about getting paid or the prospect of feasting on crab meat that night.

"Is there _anything_ that would make you excited?" she grumbled to her companion. "Anything that would make you happy?"

He ignored her, as he always did when the questions were hypothetical or stupid, but a moment later he shocked her by speaking up without a prompt, a sharp tone in his voice that she'd never heard before, even in the supermarket.

"Alert. Something's wrong up there."

She froze, staring up at Megaton, only beginning to be visible a quarter-mile ahead, mostly obscured by the landmass. _She_ could see nothing, hear nothing out of the ordinary. "What is it? How can you tell?" she whispered, straining her eyes and her ears, but sensing nothing.

"Sounds there shouldn't be - screaming, shooting. Smell of gunpowder." He set his end of their burden down and drew his rifle from its holster on his back. "We have to leave the animal here. Follow if you must, but stay low. Behind me." He was calm, but projected a sense of urgency that couldn't be ignored. He'd also just spoken more words than he had in an entire week of deflecting her interrogations; not only that, but he'd actually given _her_ orders.

Rendered mute with astonishment, she bit back a series of irrelevant follow-up questions and obeyed his directions, gripping the pitiful weapon she'd taken to wielding - a claw-hammer the length of her forearm - and matching his stealthy tread step for step. She _couldn't_ hear anything at all, actually - a chilly wind was blowing strongly in from the wide river behind them, and it deafened her hood-muffled ears with its howl. She had long known that all of Richard's senses were keener than her own, however, and she didn't doubt his warning.

Long weeks in the rough environment had led to some necessary repairs on her gear, with the result that the many patches and stains on her garb had given it a mottled look that lent itself well to camouflage against the gray-brown terrain. If she laid still, flat against the ground, she could almost disappear into the grass, rock, and dirt. The same could not be said of Richard. Though his movement was stealthy, he could not be ignored, his long, kevlar coat a deep, unnatural black that stood out starkly, especially in broad daylight. She had half a mind to order him to hunker down with her for an hour or more, waiting for whatever trouble lay ahead to pass. But if there _were_ raiders in Megaton - and who else could it be? - then she knew they would need his help. She said nothing to dissuade him from his course.

Following Richard's lead, they took a clockwise route around town, approaching the gate from the relatively high ground on that side. Still hidden behind the ever-present rocks and debris, they spotted a line of eight men running in an orderly formation down from the gates, to destinations unknown. These were _not_ raiders; Amari knew that at a glance, even at this distance. Raiders didn't have military haircuts, quality armor (dark, bulky, and uniform in appearance), or the discipline and self-restraint to move in a group without whooping and hollering. They were running away from them and hadn't spotted them in their cover, and Amari breathed a sigh of relief. Her relief vanished when she felt the man beside her stand up to aim his gun.

She put a futile hand to grab his pant cuff, trying to restrain him. "What are you… _don't_ do it. Don't shoot-"

Ignoring her, he took the shot, dropping the trailing man at fifty yards. He shot again, and winged a second, someone who'd turned to look at his fallen comrade. His third shot appeared to miss, but the rapid fire had apparently spooked the survivors, and they sped up their steps rather than accept a shootout with a target or targets that they couldn't see.

He dropped back down into a crouch, watching them disappear over the horizon while Amari stared open-mouthed at _him_ , impressed by the accuracy, but irritated that he'd risked their safety in an unnecessary attack. She held her tongue, however, and waited an extra minute before approaching the body cautiously. With an effort, she grabbed the man's armored shoulder and turned him over, wincing at what remained of his face, now little more than an splintery, gory exit wound.

"Do you know this symbol, Richard?" He shook his head, and she sighed, not sure what she had expected. Hand-drawn on the chestplate of the blood-speckled armor was the rough image of a white eagle. Or-... she frowned. She supposed it could be an eagle's claw instead of the bird itself. Perhaps it was intentionally ambiguous. _It doesn't matter_ , she reminded herself. _What matters is why they were here. What they did when they were in Megaton_. Dread gripped the pit of her stomach. She was now even more afraid of what they'd find inside.

She reached inside the dead man's pockets, searching for a clue to his identity, or perhaps some caps. She found only a crumpled piece of paper, on which was scrawled a crude map and several short lines of text. All written with a familiar hand. Her breath caught in her throat, and her apprehension became that much more more tangible. _No_ , she thought as she folded the paper carefully into a smaller square and tucked it safely into her pocket. _I won't despair yet_. To Richard, she said only, "Let's go see what the damage is inside. Stay wary."

Something poked her in the arm. It was the butt of a shiny pistol she couldn't identify. Richard was trying to hand her the gun that had been in the corpse's holster. "You need to carry this," he insisted. "Use it to protect yourself if something happens to me or we get mobbed. It's the logical thing to do."

She stood up and shook her head, eyes wide. "I can't do that."

A flicker of impatience skimmed over his features, then disappeared. "Yes, you _can_. Just hold it while we walk in. If there are any more of these men, point and pull the trigger. It's not that hard." She accepted the weight, holding it at arm's length as though it might bite her, and followed him up the hill to the gate.

Megaton was no longer secure against the outside world. It looked as though one of the attackers had landed a grenade at Deputy Weld's feet: the cowboy-hat clad robot lay silent and unmoving beside the warped metal sheeting of the gate, now caved inwards from the explosion. Still reeling over the the implications of what she'd read, Amari followed Richard's lead, letting the pistol he'd forced her to retrieve dangle from nerveless fingers as they crossed the shattered threshold.

"Amari… Rich… y'all made it. I was afraid that they might have bushwhacked the two of you goin' out this mornin'. You catch the end of that?" Sheriff Simms staggered up to meet them, holding his heavy revolver in his off hand, skin an unhealthy grayish color, faced beaded with perspiration. And no wonder. He'd been shot in his right arm, and the sleeve of his duster was dark with blood.

"Richard killed one as they ran away. Sheriff, there's something you need to know about those men-" She had to tell _someone_ what she knew. Simms would know what to do. Could take action on it to prevent further harm.

"Not _now_ , honey." He groaned and leaned against the wall of his own house, fighting to stay upright. "Doc could use an extra hand down there, plus whatever supplies Moira can spare. Lotta people hurt in the clinic down there. Lotta people _dead_. Thank God Hardin was inside for the whole thing… told him I'd tan his hide if he stuck his nose out again."

In a rare moment of authority, Amari took charge of the situation. " _You_ need help, Sheriff. Let Richard take your place while you go get that arm seen to. I'll be down in a moment with Moira and our med-kit." Partially supporting his taller, heavier frame, she got him down the hill to the door of the clinic, though he kept stopping every few paces to look uneasily over his shoulder back at his post, only reluctantly relinquishing the guard to the other man.

Handing off the injured lawman to Manya at the door, horrified by the crowded conditions inside - how many people had been hurt? - Amari ran up the ramp to the Craterside Supply, mentally making a account of the things she needed to borrow. _Moira won't mind the donation of a few stimpaks_ , she affirmed silently. _I never saw her skimp on helping another person. Except for Richard, of course, but I'm sure there's a good reason for that._

She skidded to a stop outside of the shop, frozen in the act of pulling her outer gear off - she couldn't stitch people up while wearing heavy gloves and tinted goggles. The door was still locked - she jiggled the handle to be sure - but there was a hole the size of a man's head blasted through the wood at chest height, with extra buckshot peppering the perimeter. Chilled by a premonition, but without knowing _why_ she was afraid, she turned her key in the lock. Although the edge of the door dragged slightly as it swung out - the attack had damaged it slightly in its frame - she got it open in the end, though by then she'd seen enough inside to wish she hadn't.

"Oh... not again. Not again." Nothing about the shop was disturbed - the cashbox was intact, the lights were on, Moira's tools and projects were scattered like chaff over every conceivable surface like they always were. But Moira herself had been on the other side of the door, and still held her own, unfired weapon; two inches of wood had stolen a lot of the force of the shot, but not enough.

Kneeling beside _another_ dead friend - hadn't one been _enough_? - and checking for signs of life more out of habit than hope, she found what she expected. _Again_. Pulling the paper out to study it once more, Amari gripped the damning document with fierce resolve. Moriarty would pay for what he'd done. The town couldn't help but admit his crimes now. She'd personally see him brought to account for this, if it was the last thing she did.

Other things took precedence, though. The living victims needed care, and she did what she could, learning on the fly about bullet wounds, watching Church out of the corner of her eye for an example of what to do. Stockholm, the guard who'd been stationed above the gate during the attack, was the first to die on her, choking to death on internal bleeding from a lung-shot she couldn't figure out how to access for a stimpak treatment. Two more died before evening, Billy Creel and a middle-aged woman, a local farmer whose name she had never learned. The rest looked as if they would survive the night, and the majority were able to limp away to their homes.

When her usefulness was spent and she saw that Church had things in hand, she left the clinic and saw to Moira's grave, digging most of it herself, raising blisters on her soft hands with the rough-handled shovel before accepting Richard's offer of help to finish.

"She didn't even like you," she said to him with the first words she spoken in an hour, watching the dirt fly. "I'm sorry about that. I still don't know why. Don't know if I'll ever know. Do you?"

He didn't answer anything to this, but helped her lay the body, wrapped in an old quilt, in the cold dirt and began to cover it up.

"Hold on a second. There's some things I need to say first." She sat down on the edge of the grave, letting exhausted hands drop into her lap. They were dirty and bleeding - she'd forgotten to put her gloves back on - and they felt weak and useless in the face of the deaths she had failed to prevent this day.

"I'm sorry, Moira. Thank you for taking a chance on me, for saving my life. I'm sorry - I know this is partly my fault. I'm sorry I never made it to the library for you. I'll make sure he can't hurt anybody else again. I'll try to be the same sort of person you were, kind and helpful and curious. Only less erratic," she amended quickly. "I'll tell Deacon what happened when I see him again. Good bye."

They refilled the hole, and carried rocks over to weigh it down against the packs of dogs that would scavenge the dead. Cold, hungry, and thirsty, she sank down beside the mound and pulled out the paper again, and told Richard her plan.

He listened politely, then objected in a measured tone. "I think you should wait until tomorrow to move. You're exhausted, and the sheriff won't be good for much tonight either. We should do it in the morning. Catch him alone. An easy mark."

"You're just full of opinions today, aren't you? Where did this come from?" She pushed herself up, fumbling for the pistol - apparently a model called a Desert Eagle - that she'd jammed into her belt at some point. "Take this. It'll be better at short range than your rifle if it comes to that. And no. We're going tonight. Tomorrow might be too late - it'll give him time to consolidate his resources, spin a narrative, maybe finish off any witnesses." She jerked her head toward the gates. "He's up there right now, letting cheap drinks flow to soothe peoples' sorrow and establish himself as the sympathetic, powerful man in town. Let's go get Simms, and then we'll confront him in front of that crowd. That's the way we have to do this."

Lucy West came to the door when Amari knocked at Simms' place. It was clear from her eyes that she'd been crying. Billy Creel's little daughter, Maggie, and Hardin sat at the table, picking at their food, while the sheriff himself sat slumped, dejected at the other end.

Sparing Lucy only a sympathetic look, Amari called past her to the law-man. "Sheriff Simms, we need you to come with us now." Quickly, she laid out her plan a second time, getting a round of blank stares from the children and adults in the room.

Hardin broke in first, voice cracking as he shouted angrily, "My dad's hurt! He doesn't need to go anywhere with you."

" _Hardin_." The boy settled down at a single word from his father, but he still fixed his glare on Amari. "You got proof, girl?" His voice was slow and heavy, making her wonder just how much med-x Church had pumped into him.

"Yes." She handed him the document and waited while he looked it over, face darkening with anger despite its pallor.

He handed it back, hand shaking, either from fury or weakness. "Okay. You talk, we'll back you up with guns. We'll have one shot at this, understand? Hopefully, it won't end badly. If you've never felt angry before in your life, Amari, you need to be angry tonight. Angry, but in control."

She nodded. "Do you know of anybody we can ask for help?"

He shook his head. "As you can probably tell from that lil' piece of paper, my best men are the ones lyin' dead or laid up in the clinic. Nah, it's just us. We can only hope that there's enough of the scaredy-cat neutrals hanging out in the bar tonight to be a fair jury." Standing up, he ordered Lucy, "Keep the door barred, keep the kids in, Lucy. If I don't come back, th' three of you get the house."

"Let me come with you, dad." Hardin had jumped up and gotten his .22, eyes burning with eagerness. "One more gun can't hurt."

"No, son. No way in hell am I doin' that. _Stay_."

They took the long way around, following the outer edge of the wall - behind the water plant, behind the Craterside Supply, and then over the rickety catwalks to the saloon. Simms put his good left hand on her shoulder for a second, and rambled encouragement. "Alrighty, Amari. Be _loud_ , okay? Really, really loud. Everybody needs to hear this. Remember what he _did_. Richard, you have two guns now? That's good. Don't just shoot 'im, though. We need to convince the people first. C'mon, gang."

Inside the bright, crowded room, Colin Moriarty was sprawled in the biggest chair in front of a roaring fire. He was in the middle of a toast when they walked in. "...and in memory of our oddest friend, let's raise a glass. This town won't see the likes of Moira Brown for a long time… we can hope, anyway!" He was grinning with hearty good humor, and the desire to crush that smile moved Amari to speak up boldly as he drained his glass.

"The jig's up, Moriarty. We know what you did." This came out like a corny line from an old holovid, but it got the attention of every person there and she raised the volume and continued before anybody else could say anything. "Colin Moriarty is responsible for bringing that gang of mercenaries to Megaton. He gave them a hitlist, told them how to get by security, and told them where to go once they were in. I have proof of this."

The saloon keeper greeted this accusation with derisive laughter. "Hear this! A bitter ex-employee and her stupid bodyguard, together with a sheriff that couldn't even keep us safe, are trying to pin this tragedy on _me_. She doesn't have evidence at all. She's clever. _Educated_. She could have written whatever 'proof' she needed." He'd straightened up in his chair, and exchanged his empty glass for a knife and an unfamiliar, thick-skinned fruit, which he peeled in front of them, slowly and deliberately.

"It's not fake," she said firmly, looking around the room at the range of faces looking on. She saw fear, disbelief, cynical disinterest, and drunken amusement. For a split-second, she caught Nova's eye from her place in the corner on some old man's lap, and saw nothing but blank horror there. "It's a page torn straight from the back of that little account book of his. The same one that has a ledger of every debt he's got on us. You _all_ know the one I'm talking about."

Moriarty smiled in genial warmth, shaking his head. "That book went missin' a week ago, kiddo. Its loss has caused no end of confusion for me and my clients. But that doesn't mean I should get the noose for someone else's petty theft." He still held the room and he knew it. "You lot know who's a thief around here? Little miss butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth Amari Wilder. I sent her to collect a debt off poor, psycho-addled Silver, peaceful-like. Next thing we know, Silver's dead in a shallow grave and our resident vaultie's flush with cash. I say _she's_ the thief. I wouldn't have said she was a murderer… but, you know, it's a possibility. Who knows who she really is? What she's capable of? What she and Crazy Moira were cooking up in that laboratory of hers? I say we hold her in the drunk tank until we have a chance to look over what happened today."

Amari heard the murmurs of the people around her, felt their eyes on her, and stumbled in her speech for the first time. "Not my name… and she was dead… she was already _gone…_ " she stopped. "I can prove it. I can match the handwriting and the style of page between _this_ document," here she held up her the paper, "and the contract I bought off of Mr. Moriarty months ago. Even an untrained eye will be able to see that they were written by the same hand on the same notebook paper. This is your _chance_ , Megaton. You don't have to be under this man's thumb anymore. You can be _free_. He's guilty. He's obviously guilty!" She was breathing heavily now, and felt her hold over the room slipping away.

Confessor Cromwell, a lean and hungry look on his long face, sidled through the door behind her, reaching spidery fingers out for the note. "May I see this document, my child?"

She didn't _think_ the Children of Atom owed Moriarty anything, and relinquished it reluctantly, watching him uneasily as he carried it over to the fire to read by its light. She gasped with horror when he crumpled it into a rough ball and threw it into the fire behind him.

"A childish forgery," he declared to an uneasy room, even as a blurry shadow brushed the sleeve of his descending arm. Because Richard was there, by the fire - when had he moved? - his hand in and out of the flames in an instant. He retreated to her side in between two heartbeats, a slightly charred note clutched in a sooty hand.

"Oh, God… your hand… how could you _do_ -" she stopped in confusion. His hand looked unharmed, just dusty from the particulates. She reached out to touch the skin, forgetting about the note for the moment. His hand was _hot_ , hot enough to burn, but it was undamaged.

"So…" Moriarty began, chuckling, but rising to his feet with an attentive, combative air. "Richard, is it? How much is she payin' you to follow her around? Whatever the amount, I'll give you triple your month's pay tonight if you hand me that wee piece of paper right now and walk out of here."

Richard paused, contemplating this offer behind that inscrutable face, and he nodded, walking over to the man, who was grinning and extending his left hand - the one not holding a knife - out for the prize. For a sickening moment, it looked as if he'd won. Amari didn't see what happened next - she didn't think anybody could have followed the man's movement - but before anybody could take another breath, Moriarty's knife was no longer _in_ his hand, but _through_ it, pinning it by the wrist to the table, and Richard had the pistol pressed to the older man's head, keeping him down in his chair with the other arm. The ball of paper had dropped safely to the table, and Amari darted forward to pick it up before the spreading pool of blood could damage it more than the flames had.

"Right," she said, trying to talk over the stricken man's groans. "Add Confessor Cromwell to your mental list of people who don't have this town's best interests at heart. Moriarty, will you accept the civilized process of law, or would you prefer… shall we say… 'frontier justice'? Because Richard here's just been deputized, and he's more than willing to carry that out here and now." She wasn't sure if the wounded man was capable of articulate speech right now, but if looks could kill, she'd be dead on the spot. She made the decision for him. "I'm going to read this out loud now and remind you all of the people we saw killed and maimed today, and you can decide for yourself if this was a hit job or not."

She spread out the fragile paper on the table, memory filling in the gaps left by the burned spots. "'Lucas Simms, sheriff. Front and center. Stupid hat.' For all you people in the back, there's a little picture of our lovely town here, with arrows pointing out Moriarty's biggest obstacles in life. 'Moira Brown, chirpy broad, lives in the shop shaped like a bomb.'" She swallowed the rage that threatened to bubble up and continued. "'Billy Creel, got one good eye, lives with a noisy brat. Kill 'em both.'" She raised an eyebrow in disgust, "That's pretty spiteful, even for _you_ , Colin. Lucky thing Maggie was over at a friend's house. Is there any depth too low for you?"

"You can't prove it." Moriarty's reply was a strained whisper through gritted teeth. "It's nothing but slander from a dead bitch and her cronies."

"I'm not the one with a gun on my-" Even as she spoke, he moved for his own gun with his free arm. She couldn't later understand what he'd been thinking. Sure, he was fast, but Richard had already proved his inhuman superiority in that regard. It had probably been shock clouding his thinking. In any case, he never got hold of his secondary weapon. In a moment, his left arm was no longer attached his body - there was only a spurting stump, an uneven pairing to the arm still pinned to the table, which was itself going a bit blueish at the fingernails. The detached limb, ragged at the shoulder joint, dropped from Richard's grip as he stepped back, eyes on a wary swivel around the room, gun at the ready. Amari gulped at the sight, trying not to think about the force that it would have taken to do what Richard had just done without effort, and forced herself to continue this farce of a argument for appearance's sake.

"You got a few minutes left before you bleed to death, Moriarty. Church is busy across town with your hired thugs' handiwork and I don't know that I'm skilled or motivated enough to even _try_ to keep you alive. Why don't you come clean? Admit that you hired those eagle mercenaries? Confession is good for the soul, you know."

"It's _Talon_ , you stupid girl," he gasped, trying futilely to lift his remaining hand off the table. "And they'll get you in the end too. Save me, and I'll call them off." Her fingers, still filthy from the dirt of Moira's grave, twitched at the sight of all those torn vessels, and for a second, she considered - she _could_ clamp those, maybe tie off the whole mass… - but no. She wasn't interested in making the attempt, not even for the practice. She'd happily watch him die.

"No, thanks," she told him. "Are we all satisfied?" She swept the room with her gaze, silently checking with people individually before moving on. "Does anybody doubt that this _dying_ man is getting what he deserves?" She gestured around the room. "This is _your_ town, people. It's not one man's job to police all of it. Each of you has a responsibility to keep people like this from buying up too much power. Take the room, Simms. You all need to talk about this _now_."

Moriarty was unconscious in about a minute, and probably dead in less than ten. Amari ignored him and stepped into the shadows near the entrance while a representative slice of Megaton's citizens murmured plans for the future in stunned, fretful voices. She checked Richard's hand again, marveling at the lack of damage. "Why weren't you wearing your gloves today?" she asked. "Why isn't your hand burned?" He shrugged at both of these questions and she gave up on the interrogation. "Thank you for your help, Richard."

After watching the deliberations for an hour, Amari decided that the crisis had officially passed when Gob quietly started selling drinks again. Everybody studiously avoided the side of the room with a body in it, but otherwise they seemed to have moved on. Shaking her head over the absurd, violent world she found herself in, she led Richard back down the ramps to the general store. Sidestepping around the sticky pool of blood, she barred the door behind them, and, with Richard's help, added a heavy chest of drawers as an extra barrier against unwelcome visitors. There was no sense in taking risks. Spent from grief and exhaustion, she pointed her companion to Moira's bed and fell onto her own mattress without a backwards look. Tomorrow, she could make sense of her circumstances and move forward. For tonight, though, she was done.

A knock at the door - late in the morning - woke her up from muddled, troubling dreams. Mostly of her father, she thought. Padding downstairs, she peered through the peephole before asking Richard to move the dresser and undoing both locks herself. The sheriff's star gleamed back at her as she opened the door to Lucas Simms. Standing back, trying not to step on Moira's blood, she let him inside.

"How's the arm?" she asked dully, still half-asleep. She wanted to eat and drink something, then go back to bed for about a week.

"Hurts, but I'll live." He refused to meet her eyes, and gestured for her to follow him across the room, leaving the other man standing by the door. Leaning toward her, he spoke in a whisper, "I'm here on behalf of the surviving members of the council. We're here about… Richard. He can't stay in Megaton. _You're_ more than welcome if you want to stay on and run this place, but _he_ has to go."

"He didn't hurt anybody but our enemy last night," she responded with weary resentment. "You lot put up with Moriarty for decades, and now you want to punish the guy who rid you of him?"

"It's not what he _did_ , but how he did it. The way he pulled Moriarty apart… it's in people's heads now. They're afraid of him, threatening a mob to kill him or drive him out. I got them to agree to giving him until tomorrow morning, as long as he stays in here."

"He can hear every word you say, you know," she muttered reproachfully. "He has _very_ good ears."

Simms shot the man a scared, shameful glance, before saying in a normal tone, "Yes… well… it's nothing personal. Not my decision. I appreciate your assistance, Richard, but the others are afraid."

Amari almost choked on the unfairness of this, but decided not to fight for it. She'd had enough of Megaton and its rotten core. She nodded. "We'll leave. Both of us."

Simms was openly relieved, and it disgusted her to see his cravenness displayed openly before her. His tone became almost jolly when she didn't put up a fuss. "Knew you didn't want to stay forever anyway. Take the cash, and whatever supplies you feel like carrying away - the store and its remaining inventory will revert back to the town. All of this has left a big hole to fill, but we'll survive in the end. Thanks to the two of you."

* * *

And that was how it came about that, thirty-six hours after triumphing over her worst enemy, Amari found herself back where she started: homeless and grieving, wearing a two-hundred-year-old Pip-Boy on her left arm, and setting out with the vague intention of finding James Wilder and telling him that his daughter was dead. At least she wasn't alone this time, though. Together, she and the man known as Richard had carried away plenty of clean food and water, and ammunition for both of his guns, along with about two hundred caps. She left behind a settlement that, like every other community in the wasteland, could never be any braver or nobler than its average citizen; hoping for something better than what she'd left behind in the vault, she'd found it terribly disappointing at the end. And so her initiation into the wasteland was complete.


	8. The Dangerous Detour

**_AN: Dear guest (Mikoto), thank you for your review! Don't worry, I haven't given up on this story - I write every day, actually, on this and two other projects - but various factors have slowed me down a bit lately. I'll still try to update regularly, but it may well be closer to three weeks than two in between chapters for a while._**

* * *

"Is there _anything_ Moriarty could have offered you to turn on me?" This question had been troubling Amari for the past two days, as she re-lived those tense moments in the saloon. Alone with Richard, after an uneventful morning on the road, she could hold her curiosity back no longer. "I'm not upset that you killed him. Not at all. But I'd like to know _why_."

"I can't be bought." If she hadn't known better, she would have said that she'd offended him. "Your body language said that you wanted him eliminated. The situation was dangerous and required action. So I killed him." He was sitting in the corner of the decrepit shell of a diner where they'd stopped for lunch, facing outward and eating mechanically as he scanned the view outside for danger. They'd met no one on the road so far, and nothing more hazardous than a handful of blowflies and a half-dead radscorpion missing two legs, but he was ever alert for trouble.

She hung her head in despair. They were back to the most basic of all her questions, one that he never failed to answer unsatisfactorily. "But why are you loyal to me _at all_?"

"I don't know how to answer that." She _wasn't_ imagining things. There was an emotional quality to his words today, a clear note of frustration not concealed by his usual even tone. She rejoiced silently, even as he continued, "Do you wish I wasn't?"

His counter-question was one she hadn't expected and she had to buy a moment to think by taking a large bite of her stale cornbread - the last of Moira's inconsistent experiments with baking. _Did_ she want Richard to leave? No. _Hell_ no. She needed him. She could have spared her own left arm more than she could have done without his help as far as survival was concerned. But as time went on, the inequality of their arrangement bothered her more and more. She did little more than make the decisions, contributing only a little navigation and social nicety to their team, and he was gradually getting better at even this latter skill.

"Of course not. It's just that I feel bad about taking advantage of your generosity," she explained for what must have been the dozenth time. "There are people who would pay a _lot_ for your services. People who actually have a plan and the means to provide you with decent gear. I'm trying to tell you that you're selling yourself short. You could be doing a lot more with your skills than just babysitting me."

"It's my job," he said firmly, with the air of one pronouncing the final word on a subject. "Finish your meal. It's not safe to stay in a place like this for very long."

She stuffed her last bite in her mouth and forced it down with a drink of water. She wasn't done, however, and now tried a new tack. "What would you do if I died?"

He was quiet for so long that she thought he had chosen to ignore the question - which was something he did fairly often - but just as she rose to repack the remains of their food and drink, he spoke again, grinding out the words reluctantly, as though his vocal chords had gone rusty.

"I… I guess… I'll return… home. For reassignment."

"Where's home?" she asked, eyes intent on his face. "Are you remembering?"

He shook his head. "Maybe it'll come to me if you die," he said helpfully. "Let's move out."

* * *

Leaving another home behind had been strange, but not as hard as it had been the first time. And Megaton _had_ been a home to her, even if it was for only a few months. Without Moira, though, it wouldn't have been the same, even if she hadn't just seen the worst and weakest of what the other residents had to offer. As much as she tried to make herself hate Sheriff Simms for his cowardice, she could manage only tired resentment and grudging understanding. The same went for most of the others who'd turned their backs on her. They had their children and their livelihood to think about. Amari had only herself to watch out for - well, herself and Richard, who didn't seem to care where he went or what he did. So she left without a quarrel, and without many hard feelings.

As if ashamed at itself, the decimated town had appeared almost deserted, although it was well past sunrise when they exited the Craterside Supply for the last time. No one met her eyes, people ducked into their houses ahead of her steps, and even Simms was missing from his usual post. There was one surprise as she hit the bottom of the ramp. Church - weaselly, apathetic, probably-complicit Church - stepped down from his door and handed her three stimpaks, then disappeared again without saying a word.

She didn't know if the doctor felt guilty, grateful, or what, but she was thankful for the gift. Most of the medical supplies that had been in Moira's stores had gone to help those injured in the attack, and her own kit had only the barest essentials. After months in the wasteland, she'd finally learned to sit up and take notice when someone showed kindness without the possibility of a reward. It was rare, much rarer than it had been in the relative luxury of the vault. She treasured these gestures now.

Once they had passed through the gates, it had taken only a hour to move beyond the region familiar to Amari, past the girders of the old highway and to the south. She had spent the previous evening plotting a southeast course toward Rivet City, giving Fairfax ruins and Greyditch a wide berth, having heard disturbing rumors about both these locations. Their choice of a lunch-spot was located at a crossroads equidistant between these two, and she had taken this opportunity to reorient herself to the new geography, and continued this effort as she resumed walking, maps in hand.

Amari had spent most of yesterday's leisure hours searching through Moira's haphazard filing system, and preserving the documents that she considered useful or valuable. There had been two relevant maps among these. One was a hand-drawn representation of the places her various assistants had visited (to which Amari had added very little in her tenure). It had a lot of localized details for a scattershot array of places, most of which she had no intention of ever setting foot in. Moira had not been much of a cartologist and this map had very uncertain scaling; to add to these drawbacks, the entire northeast corner was obscured by a dark purple wine-stain. The second map was extremely fragile, a pre-war artifact that had seen some rough handling, but it was far more useful: it showed all of the the DC metro stations and their lines. Superimposed upon this, Moira had penciled in several significant locations, including Rivet City.

Intent on deciphering the tiny, cramped handwriting, Amari didn't notice that Richard had stopped until she ran straight into him when he froze in front of her. He dropped into a crouch, pulling her down with him. He then crawled forward, off the road, until he was peering over the ridge onto the lower ground below. She followed, alarmed but curious, and looked down in the direction he was pointing.

Three figures - humans, she decided, though it wasn't obvious at first glance - were conferring amongst themselves perhaps fifty yards ahead of and thirty feet below their position, standing at the feet of a rusted-out water tower. She couldn't be sure of what they were because they were dressed head-to-toe in bulky armor, resembling the power-armored soldiers from the old war vids she'd seen in class, complete with high-quality energy weapons. Only instead of the the gleaming chrome of the Anchorage heroes, these were a matte black, bearing no insignia visible at this range.

"Who are they?" she whispered.

"I don't know. Not a fight that I want," he muttered in return.

"They might be friendly. Can you hear what they're saying?"

He shook his head. "Not much. Something about ants. And research. I'd have to get closer to get more." He looked at her as if he expected her to make that request of him, and when she said nothing added another warning. "I'd advise not making contact. There's nothing obvious to be gained from that, and they may be dangerous."

She groused internally at this, but followed his guidance, staying low and flat until the others had moved on. The strangers took a northwestern route that ignored the road altogether, striking out for a destination that only they knew. Only when they had completely disappeared from sight did Richard motion for them to continue on their way.

The shadows were growing long and the air slightly chilly, but no likely shelter presented itself in the hinterland of the city she was actively avoiding. To her, the tall buildings - those still standing, anyway - represented uncertainty and danger, an environment she was utterly unfamiliar with.

"There's a metro station about a mile and a half to the east," she said to Richard, frowning at her Pip-Boy, which had in the last hour taken to flashing a concerning message at random intervals across the screen: "Return to RobCo facility for routine maintenance." The battered device must have gotten a ping from some long-neglected satellite, however, because it was finally displaying a map that more or less resembled the land she saw in front of her. "The caravan hands say those are pretty good places to stop for the night. Except for the zombies, raiders, and mutants that also like them," she supplemented gloomily.

Richard made a non-verbal sound, whether of agreement or of concern, she wasn't sure. Tired of second-guessing herself, she decided to commit to a decision. "That's where we're going," she said firmly. "It'll bring us in among those buildings, but not too far."

It was a pleasant surprise to actually _see_ the arch spelling out the name of the station, directing the way down the steps to "Bailey's Crossing." It was her first real confirmation that they weren't yet lost, and that Moira's maps weren't pure fiction. The narrow streets, heaped high with rubble, were perfectly still and quiet. Richard hadn't said anything, but she could tell he didn't like it. She didn't either, come to think of it. They were too exposed here.

"Let's get underground," she said happily. It wasn't the vault, but the prospect of tons of rock above her head made her feel warm and comfortable.

Richard, surprisingly, agreed, his tone distant as he replied. "Underground is good."

The station was cool and dark, so much so that they needed the Pip-Boy light almost immediately. It was silent, except for the occasional drip of water and the echo of their own footsteps off the walls. Wolfgang had told her that he seldom ventured very far into these tunnels, that the rails themselves were inevitably infested with dangerous things, namely the wretched remnants of the people who had sought refuge from the bombs therein. Many of them were still there, technically alive but… lost. Not like Gob at all, these ghouls were feral. Vicious.

She spotted the corner of a mattress inside the gaping door to a restroom, but didn't propose stopping just yet. It was too close to the entrance. Anything could come upon them, even if they set a watch. She kept walking, but it occurred to her then to ask Richard something.

"How much sleep do you actually need?" She had never actually seen him sleep, even for the two nights they'd spent in the house together. With him on watch for the majority of the night she would feel much safer, wherever they ended up.

"About two hours," he said shortly. "It made Walter uncomfortable. Do you smell that?"

"Smell what?" But before the words were out of her mouth, she thought she knew what he was talking about. Worse than the expected funk of dampness and decay, there was something rank and rotten ahead. Meat left out to spoil. Dead things lying in the dark.

"We need to get out of here," Richard said, a note of real alarm in his voice now.

"Just a minute longer." She could see where the tunnel broadened out into something wider just ahead and wanted to see what it was. As she stepped toward this opening, however, her foot brushed _something_ \- a string or a wire - and she didn't have time to breathe before Richard had rushed her bodily forward, safely away from the tumble of rocks and jagged metal that the trap would have dumped on her head.

"Whoa. Thanks." When the rocks stopped shifting and rolling down the slope, even Amari could hear a second noise coming from behind them: the rattle and clank of the gate, far behind them, as someone - more than one someone, from the sound of it - entered the tunnel behind them, heavy footfalls echoing on the ancient tile.

"Assumed hostiles approaching," Richard said urgently. "I'm not prepared to engage this enemy. We should run. Straight ahead." So they ran.

Amari had never been swimming in any body of water, let alone the irradiated, mirelurk-infested Potomac. Nevertheless, she felt that running with Richard must have been a little like being dragged along by the powerful current of that river. He _could_ move faster than he was currently doing - she'd seen it before - but as it was, it was all she could do to keep her feet under her, and to keep his grip from yanking her arm from its socket. They were flying through the darkness, over a bridge that transversed an enormous concourse - a vast, cavernous space, many times bigger than the foyer of the vault - intent on the other side. How he could see the way ahead, she didn't know. Her dim light showed her only things close to her feet - bones, both human and animal, glistening heaps of offal, and bloodstained piles of armor and clothing.

"What _is_ this?" she gasped, not expecting him to spare the attention for an answer.

"FEV experiments run amok. _Don't talk. Run faster_." He wasn't even out of breath, and Amari marveled at him despite her fear. He could already have been a quarter mile away if he wasn't pulling her dead weight. She tried to push herself to match his effort, but knew she was nearing the end of her slight endurance.

They had entered a new tunnel on the opposite side of the station, a perfect twin to the one behind them. It sloped upwards, winding this way and that as they climbed towards the light. As fast as they were moving, though, it wasn't enough. Deep-voiced shouts and the quick tread of heavy feet advanced on them from the darkness behind. They'd either heard their trap fall or found the rubble, and now they pursued their would-be prey with enthusiasm.

They reached the gate, the outside light gleaming through the gaps, and Richard dropped her arm, bruised where he'd grabbed her, and reached to open the door. The noises sounded very near now, and Amari choked back a sob when she saw that the gate on this side was padlocked from the inside, with chains woven in and out of the metal slats. Richard pushed his pistol roughly into her hands, growling, "Watch my back. Aim for the knees."

She took the gun, too frightened to refuse, and gripped it with both hands as she waited for a target to round the corner, lungs burning from the unaccustomed running as she panted for oxygen. For a moment, she thought he intended to try to tear the chains with his bare hands - with links as thick as her thumb! - but no. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him pull a twisted piece of wire from one of his many pockets and set to work on the padlock. Their pursuers had a light of their own - she could see shadows thrown onto the curve of the wall nearest them - and she lifted the gun, prepared to fire low into their midst. Luckily, that moment didn't come, at least not yet.

A shake, a rattle, and a gust of fresh air behind her, and they were off again, choosing an uncertain danger over certain death. It had grown darker since they'd entered the tunnel, and now only the very tops of the constructions around them gleamed with the red light of sundown.

"What's your plan?" she asked, as he hauled her up the last few steps and across an open square, toward the windowless hulk of an old office building.

"Get to a high position. Snipe. Engage at close range as a last resort."

The stairs were completed blocked by rubble. This didn't discourage Richard from the higher ground he sought, though: he boosted Amari up through the nearest hole in the ceiling, then jumped or climbed (she didn't see which) after her. After that, the shooting started.

She tried to help. She really did. She watched Richard using the old window frame as cover, and noted the way he leaned quickly around the corner to aim and shoot before retreating. She imitated his motions, firing a single shot at a blurry green figure she saw in the open space below. Before she could duck out of sight, it fired back, striking chips of cement off the edge of the building, one of which glanced off the goggles she was still wearing, leaving a white scratch on the reinforced glass.

"Save it!" he shouted. "Wait until you have a close shot." So she watched him instead, mesmerized by his movements. The hunting rifle had five shots, and he emptied them and reloaded three times in the space of about a minute. Well, she _thought_ it was a minute. Time was funny just then, and her sense of its progression got worse after what happened next.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye made her turn, however - she looked down and a lumpy, homemade grenade was rolling toward her, tracing a wobbly circle on the floor at the foot of an old desk. She stabbed at it hard with her toe, then turned away, covering the back of her head, and yelled some warning - which came out as more of a wordless cry - before the force of the explosion (along with fragments of the former desk) hit her hard from behind.

For a few seconds, Amari saw only fractured light and darkness and felt only pain - in her forehead, where she'd thumped it against an exposed beam the wall, in her back, which stung in several places not protected by her pack, and in her ears, which could hear only a high-pitched ringing sound. _This is how I die_ , she thought dreamily, lifting her face an inch or two from the ground to observe that, yes, one of the many holes in the ground had grown considerably larger, and she could see the monstrous, grinning faces of the mutants through the gap.

One pulled itself up, head and shoulders appearing on their level. Lifting the heavy gun that she had somehow kept hold of, she shot at it automatically, not really expecting to hit it through the haze that covered her senses, and managed to graze its cheek. Richard's shot, on the other hand, took out its right eye and sent the heavy body crashing back down to earth.

She shot blindly through the rest of the clip, as more of them tried to climb up. Six more shots, six more mini-explosions that she couldn't hear, and her hand relaxed on the pistol's grip, letting it go. They had more .44 ammo - or Richard did in his pack, anyway - but she could no more find it and reload at the moment than she could bring herself to sit up. Based on what she could see, Richard was doing the same, as efficiently as clockwork. It wasn't enough, however. There were too many and they were too tough. And how many bullets did he have left, anyway? He had to have gone through at least fifty by now. His shots were dull, muffled thuds that were barely audible over the ringing, and she could focus on little else.

The floor. The floor was tilting, and she had to hang on to something or she'd fall through the hole herself. _I have a concussion_ , she decided wisely, watching spent shell casings roll past her on the newly-created incline and drop down to the ground ten feet below. She wrapped a hand around Richard's ankle, hoping to steady herself enough not to join them.

He hauled her up before the level beneath them gave out altogether, and there was a leap - a controlled fall, really - from the window, as the collapsing building buried the mutants inside. The jolt of a rough landing was a shock her pounding head couldn't handle, however, and the last image she saw as he put her down was of him drawing his knife - formerly Moriarty's knife - and preparing to engage the remaining monsters at close range. Then there was nothing, the light bleeding into gray, and gray into black.

* * *

X6-88 - for that was who he was, despite the fact that everyone now called him Richard - wasn't happy, although he was trying to pretend otherwise. He told himself that he wasn't sad or mad or stressed either. It wasn't his way to feel or express open emotion, except as an act of camouflage. Yet he still found himself slipping in that regard.

The situation was far from optimal and it grated at him as he struggled to right it, confused by his own failure to avoid disaster. The principal had chosen poorly, true, but he had allowed her to choose without making any effort to change her mind, even though he had _known_ this was an unsafe way to come. It confirmed what he'd suspected for weeks - that something was wrong with him. There were huge gaps in his memory that made much of what he considered himself to be incomprehensible. He was behaving inconsistently, thinking strange things, and couldn't even remember how he had come to be assigned to his current protectee.

Richard _wanted_ to ask the principal ( _Amari_ , that is) to return him to the SRB for maintenance. Had wanted to do so since the day he woke up to find her expecting his help. They'd issue her a new bodyguard, one without his handicaps, and he'd be returned to optimal functionality. Every time he opened his mouth to make this request, however, something forbade him from speaking. Even the letters "SRB" wouldn't pass his lips in that order. He couldn't remember what they stood for or why he must go there. Yes, something was wrong with him, and it would do the principal no good until it was remedied.

And now she was hurt. That was bad. She was unconscious. Also bad - but, at the same time, it made things simpler. For a time, at least, there would be no stupid orders to contramand or complicate his programming, and no questions to distract him. His highest order was to protect the principal, and he had almost complete leeway to carry out that mission.

He left her on the ground far enough from the ruined building that nothing would fall on her. The creatures would not stop to feed until they were finished with combat, and he wouldn't make that easy for them.

About half of their pursuers had been crushed, the predictable result of tossing explosives around in a structurally-unsound building, but there were still several to go, more cautious and presumably more intelligent. He counted two crude sledgehammers and two hunting rifles, with the four of these parting to allow a hulking minigun to pass through their ranks. Richard decided to eliminate the worst threat first, before it could fill the air with bullets. Mutants were _slow_. He was counting on that. He was also counting on the fact that these particular mutants weren't used to fighting someone like him. After all, they were pretty far from the… the place that he'd come from, the name of which was dancing on the edge of his memory.

He'd been fast before. Now, unencumbered, he was faster. Rifle barrels swung toward him and the minigun began to spin, but he reached the lead mutant before it could shoot, climbing it like a tree and jamming the knife deep into the hollow behind its right ear before moving on. The quicker of the two wielding a hammer reacted quickly enough to take a swing at him as he ran through the gap between them. It succeeded only in injuring its fellow mutant - Richard himself was already gone, making a break for the decorative wall that ringed the edge of the square behind them.

He dropped below the low embankment, but not before a lucky ricochet skipped off the concrete and lodged in his calf muscle, inflicting damage that not even he could ignore. Sprinting was out, and he unslung his rifle again, preparing for a shoot-out from behind cover. He spared a glance for his charge, now moving feebly at the opposite end of the plaza. He hoped that she'd have the wherewithal to move while the mutants were distracted, because he wasn't at all sure that he'd be returning to her after this.

He exchanged fire twice more before he had to reload, grazing only scalp when his target shifted, and scoring an ineffectual hit on its torso the second time. Before he could fire again, however, another, louder crack from a better rifle finished off the enemy, taking off the top of the skull.

Allies were purely circumstantial when one was desperate and Richard didn't care who had done the shooting for the time being. As the number of enemies dwindled, however, and he saw the newcomers in action, however, he steeled himself for whatever might happen next. There were nine of them, all equipped with T-45d power armor, all toting superior firepower - energy weapons, powerful rifles, and heavy guns - and the handful of mutants remaining were no match for them in the open.

As with the figures in darker armor he'd spotted earlier in the day, the members of this group signified several things to his subconscious - some of them dangerous - but nothing at all to his higher-order processes. _Are they friend or foe_? In the space of a second, he had done the necessary calculations for a decision and was ready to act accordingly.

 _I can't win_. He knew that at once. Richard wasn't the type to either overestimate or underestimate his own abilities. He had seen this cohort in action, and while some were certainly more experienced than others, they were collectively more than a match for him, equipped as he was.

 _I could run_. His leg hurt, but he could still be out of sight in seconds if left to his own devices. On the other side of the assembled unknowns, the main complication to that plan groaned and rolled over. He wished she would get up and lend her non-threatening presence to the diplomatic situation.

 _They haven't shot at me yet._ He had saved his bullets for the monsters, and these others had done the same. It didn't mean much, but it was something.

Making his choice - the only one he could under these conditions - he set his weapon down, only a slight tremble in his hand betraying his momentary indecision, and stood up very slowly, showing his empty palms. He was nearly as dangerous disarmed as he was with a second-rate weapon, but the gesture was what counted with humans.

Sure enough, they visibly relaxed at this and their leader stepped forward after putting one last laser burst into a downed mutant that still breathed.

The voice could have been male or female, young or old. He couldn't tell through the synthesizer in the helmet. It spoke imperiously, as if accustomed to quick agreements. "You have our thanks for drawing out the mutants, civilian. There's more blocking the way to a bunker and armory ahead. Help us take the position and we'll have shelter and aid to spare. Do we have a deal?"


	9. A Technical Victory

Amari woke up in darkness with a sore neck and a sickly-pounding headache. Her first thought was one of terror - for a second, she _knew_ she was back in the tunnels, laying among the gruesome remains of the mutants' savagery, awaiting a terrible fate. Her hands rose to feel the throbbing bump on her forehead, and found that she _wasn't_ blind and it _wasn't_ dark after all - her goggles and headwear had gotten twisted around somehow and covered her eyes. She tore off the wrappings and took a breath of unfiltered air, intensely relieved, but very confused. Where was Richard? Where was _she_?

A too-cheerful voice just out of sight raised new questions. "Hi there! I'm Initiate Penelope Reddin - Penny for short - and I'm from Rivet City. Who're you?"

 _Eh?_ Turning her head slowly - and even this motion almost made her lose her lunch - Amari saw another woman, a few years older than she was, sitting up against a rusted-out van. One of her legs was bent at an odd angle, and one glance at the goofy grin on her face was enough to confirm that this stranger was drugged to the gills. And she had a big gun. A bad combination, Amari thought.

Feeling she had as well introduce herself, she began cautiously, "Hello. I'm Amari. Have you seen my companion anywhere?"

Penny giggled, a carefree expression that seemed out of place in their situation. "That interesting guy with the coat? He's helping my squad kill the rest of the muties and force their way into the bunker. They'll come back for us when it's all clear and we have a place to rest." She held up the long, exotic-looking gun that she held cradled in her lap. "Don't worry. If anything tries to snack on us in the meantime, I'll shoot it."

 _Maybe_ , Amari thought. _But I'm not counting on it_. She thought she remembered Richard handing her a pistol in the tunnel, telling her to shoot the monsters, but she didn't know where it had gotten to now. It seemed she had no choice but to trust her giddy companion. "I missed something, apparently. Who is your squad?"

Now the woman seemed insulted. "Haven't you heard of Lyons' Pride? We're only the best, most elite soldiers of the Brotherhood of Steel. Of course, I'm just an Initiate, Lyons' latest addition. To hear Paladin Vargas talk, you'd think I didn't belong here, but I'll show him, just you watch. One of these days..."

Amari closed her eyes, shutting the prattling out, and tried to settle her stomach, taking stock of her condition. One of her ears felt like it had been stabbed, then stuffed with cotton, and she worried about hearing loss. Superficial pains - at least she hoped they were superficial - stabbed the backs of her arms and legs. She hoped Richard was alright. He'd saved her life at least twice today, and she felt miserable for being so useless to him. And now they were at the mercy of the Brotherhood of Steel - the "good guys," Moira had said, but Moira hadn't always had the best judgement.

Penny broke off from her spiel and addressed Amari directly again, "Hey, are you okay? Knight Captain Colvin will be back soon to splint my leg. He'll check you out too. He's kind of our medic, since we don't really have anyone else that knows what they're doing."

"I'm alright, I think." She opened her eyes and raised herself up on one elbow. She spotted her bag just out of reach, and contemplated the thought of crawling toward it to retrieve some water and medicine. "How long was I unconscious?"

"Mmm. Ten minutes? I dunno."

 _That's not great_ , she fretted to herself, mentally testing her own orientation. _It's_ … _the end of December. Don't know what day of the week. Did I know it before?_ She frowned. She'd almost always known these things in the vault: what day it was, what time it was, what she was scheduled to do that day, and the the next, and the one after that. These days, she was doing good to remember what month it was, and had a "schedule" only in the most general of terms. _I was in the metro station_ , she recollected, getting back on track. _We were locked in. Is that when I got hurt?_ She couldn't remember anything beyond the chained door.

"Where are we, Penny?" she asked the soldier.

"We're sitting outside of a pre-war compound called Virtual Strategies or Virtual Solutions or something. The Sentinel says there are military-grade weapons inside for the taking - once we clear the muties and the rebels out, of course."

Amari understood only bits and pieces of this. "Rebels?"

Penny explained in a hushed tone, though Amari wasn't sure why. There was no one to hear. "Outcasts. Former Brothers and Sisters who defied Elder Lyons and stole tech from the Brotherhood. We're not going to _kill_ them, but they do need to pay for their crimes."

"Oh, okay." She waited a long moment, then asked, "Am I a hostage or something?"

Penny laughed. "Of course not! We're the _good_ guys, silly. We rescue civies like you all the time. Standing orders from the Elder himself. That's the main thing that separates us from the Outcasts. They wouldn't give you the time of day."

The next hour passed in a painful blur. After a lot of distant shooting, Richard eventually came back, along with a number of terrifying apparitions in armor. Once detached from his intimidating suit, Knight Captain Colvin proved to be a tall, kindly man with an air of competence. After verifying that Amari was awake and responsive, he saw to the talkative Initiate first, ordering her moved once the leg was stabilized.

By this time, Amari was sitting up, trying to muster up the resolve to stab a stimpak into her own neck, while watching Richard with amazement. Having wisely declined her dazed offer of help, as well as any painkillers, he dug around in his own leg until he found the flattened bullet, all without so much as a whimper or a grimace.

She let the hand holding the stimpak relax. "Thank you for saving me, Richard," she said shakily. "You were great. I'm sorry I almost got us both killed."

"It's my job," he answered shortly He sounded tired and irritable, and she didn't blame him. He'd certainly done more than his share to keep their enterprise afloat today.

"Why do you-" she stopped. The least she could do to repay him is to not badger him with questions. Instead, she offered him the still-unused stimpak to close his wound. He refused.

"Unnecessary. I heal quickly. Use it on yourself."

She couldn't, but the medic took over then and did just that, softening the pain and making her thoughts fuzzier for a while. After answering his questions and suffering the indignity of transport down into an underground complex, she was finally allowed to sleep.

* * *

"Are you awake? I need to ask you some questions." This was an unfamiliar voice, impatient and insistent. Amari _thought_ she had been asleep, but she supposed she wasn't anymore. She opened her eyes and looked around, taking in the grey walls, narrow bunks, and harsh white lighting. While scraps of clothing, empty bottles, and other peoples' gear suggested that the room had previously held other occupants, there was only one other person currently in the room, a muscular blond woman with searching eyes and a slight frown.

Before she'd answer any, Amari had some questions of her own. "Where's Richard? Is he alright?"

"Your companion is fine, or I assume he is. I've only seen him stare into space. It's eerie. Doesn't talk much, does he? He helped us willingly enough, but he hasn't given us much information at all."

"No." She rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to push back a lingering headache. "He suffered some brain damage a few months ago, before I met him. I don't know what his 'normal' is, but I suspect this is... not it. I'm trying to help him."

"He's pretty good with a gun for someone with that kind of damage." Her tone was skeptical, as if she didn't quite believe this explanation. "So, who are _you_ , then, Amari? We got your name from him, at least. Very little else."

She didn't need to lie. She took a deep breath, and rattled off the basic details. "I'm a vault-dweller from 101, near Springvale. I left last August, and since then I've been living in Megaton, trying to figure out how to survive out here. We're on our way to Rivet City, to meet up with someone who left the vault just before I did. A doctor, James Wilder. Have you heard of him?" she asked hopefully. "Three-Dog's mentioned him a couple of times."

The woman shook her head. "I know the man on the radio is a force for good - my dad gets a kick out of his program, and gives him protection because he's on our side - but I find him annoying. Don't listen to it much."

"Well, between that and Enclave radio, I'll take the one that actually has real music…"

Lyons didn't crack a smile. "The Enclave is no joke and they're more than just a voice on the air. That's partly why we're here." Without any preamble, she changed subjects. "On a related subject, can we borrow your Pip-Boy for a few minutes? Or borrow _you_ , if it's attached to your arm? I'm Sarah Lyons, by the way. Brotherhood Sentinel."

Amari followed Lyons down the corridor, passing men and women that she remembered only vaguely from her arrival on the previous day. Somewhat off balance, she felt dizzy and nauseous, but she was also hungry, and wondered if Richard or somebody had retrieved her bag with all of their food in it.

Entering a room with a ton of computers, a set of blast doors at one end, and an egg-like pod in the center, Lyons snapped out an order, "Specialist Olin, walk Amari through using her device to interface with the sim-pod."

A tall woman with white-blond hair flanked by a menacing guard in power armor glared at them both as they entered the room. "Why should I?"

"Because, if you don't, you'll spend the next week in the cell with the other surviving traitors, waiting for the escort team to show up and drag you all home. You'll start getting pretty hungry, too, if we don't find those MREs listed on the armory manifest. _Do it._ "

Amari stood awkwardly by, watching this back-and-forth without comprehension. Penny had mentioned rebels, and she supposed that this was one of them. After a few more barbs, Olin gave in and gestured for Amari to come forward, a sour look on her face.

"If you're going to do the simulation, civilian, you'll need to wear one of those neural interface suits, so go change." She wrinkled her nose. "Between you and me, you don't look like the best choice for this mission. You _do_ know it's potentially fatal, right? Or didn't the great and glorious Sentinel warn you?"

"What?" Amari asked, alarmed.

" _She's_ not going to do it, Olin. _Obviously_." Lyons sounded weary. She gestured to somebody behind them, "Gallows is my pick for the job."

"Then _he_ needs to be wearing the Pip-Boy," Olin said, with the air of someone explaining something to a dim-witted child. "That's how it works."

They were both looking at Amari now. She cleared her throat and answered the unspoken question. "It, uh, actually hurts quite a bit to take it off. They're designed to be worn for a lifetime. I'd much rather not."

Lyons nodded curtly, before giving another order. "Do a workaround. Take all the time you need. We still have rations to spare for another day or so."

Olin cursed and pulled a second chair over to the terminal she was sitting at, forcing Amari to take a spot at her right, with her arm twisted awkwardly to display the screen. "Get comfortable, wastelander. This might take a while." She continued muttering about meatheads and their inane commands for some minutes, clicking away at her keyboard all the while.

Amari squeezed her eyes shut against a fresh headache, and tried not to bother the angry woman by breathing too loudly, let alone by throwing up on her. She was self-conscious of the way she smelled after a rough day and night, confused by the politics at play, and unhappy to be nothing more than a piece of machinery as far as these people were concerned. Her head sank down on the crook of her other arm and she pretended to be asleep until Olin's taut voice interrupted her.

"It says you're concussed."

"What?"

"Your Pip-Boy."

"Oh. Yeah. It's probably right." She lifted her head. "Can you not spy on me, please? I don't have much to hide, but there's still _some_ personal information on there." Her diary from when she was twelve, for one, and other personal documents that she'd neglected to delete when she'd sold the thing to Moira.

Olin connected a cable to her own computer and scowled at the display. "Where did you steal this from?"

Too miserable to take offense, she mumbled back, "It's _mine_. Everybody in Vault 101 gets one when they turn ten."

"Figures you're a vault-dweller. The only surprise is how far you've gotten from home. I bet you wish you'd stayed there, huh? People like you only find trouble out here. Should have stayed where you were."

There seemed to be nothing productive to say to this, so Amari remained silent and let another hour go by. At some point, someone - she didn't see who - set a prepackaged meal and a bottle of water by her elbow, and she ate the pre-war sludge slowly, using sips of the water to wash the tasteless stuff down, hoping that it was at least sterile. She napped again, and wondered how Richard was getting along, and if he was as lonely among all of these strangers as she was. She doubted this, but found herself trying - and failing - to imagine Richard with a family or among friends. Caught in the middle of this daydream, she fell fully asleep, jerking awake when Olin released her arm.

"Tell Lyons that it's ready," Olin directed at someone else in the room. "Tell her the failsafe is still locked. Dying in the sim means cardiac arrest. You can't blame me if anything happens"

Freed, Amari wandered out of the room, passing a grim-faced man wearing a strange outfit lined with wire mesh and sensors. Whatever these people were doing with this room, she didn't much care at the moment. After a few false turns, she found a bathroom with functional plumbing and then the sleeping quarters again. Someone had put her bag next to the bunk where she'd spent the night, but she didn't bother brushing her teeth or doing anything else. A minute later, and she was out again, this time until evening.

When she awoke, she went exploring, eager for company now. A big, blond fellow nodded at her as she entered the control room where most of the troop was gathered, intent on the pod in their midst. "Evening, civilian. Amari, that is. Feeling better?" She smiled nervously at the man, whom she recognized as Colvin from the day before, and took the one unoccupied seat beside him.

"Much better, thanks. What is everybody doing?"

"You've heard of the Battle of Anchorage? In that pod there, you can play a simulation of part of it. Gallows did it first and unlocked the armory, but since we're stuck below-ground for a while, the kids are having a bit of fun trying to beat each other's time. So far, though, no one's scored higher than Gallows' one and only run. The score's a function of the time it takes and how many information caches the participant retrieves. He got 'em all, and he did it fast."

"Have you tried it?"

He seemed embarrassed. "I attempted it, yes, but died just short of the last checkpoint. Dusk's never going to let me live it down. I'm just glad no one asked me to do it with the safeties off." He scratched his thick beard. "We owe you big for the use of your little computer to unlock this and the weapons room. If you feel up to a go, you're welcome to jump into the queue. It's not really my cup of tea, but it's a rare chance to train in combat without the risk of dying."

"Maybe. That's something I need to work on."

No one's turn took more than ten or fifteen minutes, and after watching a series of people emerge triumphant from the pod (including the young woman from the day before, leg-cast and all, as well as Lyons herself), Amari decided to suit up and give it a try.

"Good luck, Amari," said Penny with an easy grin as she limped over and recorded Lyons' time on the leaderboard that someone had tacked to the wall. "Watch out for those snipers on the bridge. They got me early the first time."

No one had told her anything specific about the scenario, and she remembered only the vaguest details from learning about the historic campaign in school. Expectations of immediate armed conflict gave way to pleased wonder over the environment she found herself dropped into. _Snow_. _This is snow!_ It was freezing through the camouflaged fatigues she wore, and the wind drove bits of sleet into the exposed skin of her face, but she didn't mind. Maneuvering heavy gloves and an unfamiliar body taller and stronger than her own, she formed a snowball and studied its texture before tossing it experimentally over the side of a cliff, where it plunged quickly out of sight. She gulped, and stumbled back, feeling a sense of vertigo at the sight. That drop looked real.

As it turned out, she wasn't alone on the mountainside. A man's voice interrupted her thoughts. "That was a hell of a nasty fall you took. When your chute bunched up like that I thought you were a goner. I hope the other guys made it… are you ready to do your part?"

She looked up from surveying the harsh landscape far below to find a man staring down at her where she was crouched at the cliffside. "What are you talking about?"

"The mission? The hundreds of Red Chinese in these mountains? I don't care if you _did_ fall on your head, soldier, it's time to get into the game or die. We _are_ going to retake Anchorage, and you're going to help."

"Give me a minute, please. I've never seen snow before." She was still enthralled by the depth of the sensory experience, and cared more for exploring the simulation than for pursuing any goal. There was a slight flatness to the person in front of her - a scripted feel to his dialogue - but he still came off at least as human as Richard did. She was curious about how detailed his programmed responses would be, and decided to test him.

"What's your name? Where are you from?"

He looked beseechingly at the sky. "God. This isn't good… I'm Sergeant Benjamin Montgomery, but you can call me Ben if that's too many syllables. It doesn't matter where I'm from, but I _do_ want to survive to go back there. So pull yourself together."

She decided to humor him in the hopes that he would leave her alone to explore. "What do you want me to do, Ben?"

"I've got climbing gear. You don't. I want you to follow the cliffside path around to the Outpost and meet me up on top. Take out as many Commies as you can along the way. Understood?"

"Perfectly."

She watched him climb out of sight, scaling the cliff with ropes and tools, and then started building a snowman. She'd only seen them in books, and doubted she'd ever have another opportunity to do this. She was almost done decorating its face with small rocks, her pistol still holstered and untouched, when a Chinese patrol rounded the corner suddenly and killed her.

Penny, still acting as the scorekeeper, scratched her head as a disappointed Amari sat up in the pod. "Hey girl. That took you all of 30 seconds on our end. Computer said you only moved about ten feet from the start and didn't fire your weapon. What gives?"

"30 seconds? I was in there for at least an hour."

"Wonders of technology," the initiate explained. "Time passes precisely 144 times more quickly inside the simulation than it does on the outside. Do you want another go?" she said pityingly. She added in a whisper, masking it by leaning in to tighten a loose strap on the suit, "Sarah - Sentinel Lyons - and Vargas wanted _some_ proof that you were semi-competent, to see if you can keep up with us on the road. This is a trial, of sorts. I suggest you take it seriously. Whoever you are, wherever you're going, a little respect from the Brotherhood can't hurt."

Amari blushed. "Alright. I can do better."

Her second run took much less time than her first, but she did actually _try_. She fired her weapon in the general direction of the people trying to kill her, suppressing her reaction to the memory of trauma that the act of pulling the trigger recalled. It _was_ easier to shoot at people in here, knowing that her targets weren't real. But making a real attempt made no difference. Trying only meant that she died faster. On the third attempt, she killed one of her attackers, making it slightly farther along the path, _almost_ reaching the health and ammo checkpoint before a group of them gunned her down from above. It didn't hurt to be shot in the simulation, but it did send unpleasant, numbing signals to her brain. After she emerged a third time, shaking and sweating, headache rekindled, Penny told her she was done for the night.

"Colvin says you should give your brain a rest. You can try again tomorrow, if you want. It's kind of exhilarating, isn't it?"

Humiliated and still a little rattled from her abrupt deaths, Amari excused herself, making way for Jennings' turn, and went off to find Richard. He was sitting near the elevator shaft, head tilted slightly back, apparently staring at nothing in the dim, cavernous space. She shivered.

"Richard?" she said softly, not wanting to wake him up if he was asleep behind those glasses. "Are you awake?"

"Of course."

"I'm sorry I left you alone for so long. I've been sleeping, mostly. How's your leg?"

"It's healing."

"Would you like to come try a war simulation? I bet you'd be amazing at it. It might be fun..." She trailed off. "Fun" and "Richard" did not go together.

"No. I looked at that earlier. Something tells me that it would be a very bad idea for me to climb into that pod." His tone seemed to be implying more than the actual words conveyed, but she didn't know what subtle message he was trying to convey. Rather than asking for clarification, she changed the subject.

"What are you thinking about as you sit here?"

"Questions," he growled. "You got me started on _questions_. Who am I? Why am I here? Who are you? What have I forgotten? Where did I-"

She interrupted him. She didn't mean to, but it slipped out. "Wait, what? You _know_ who I am. I'm Amari. Just Amari."

"Why am I protecting you, Amari?" he asked, a frustrated edge to his voice now.

"Is it because you chose to?" she asked hopefully.

"No, that's not it," he muttered. "You don't fit the profile. You're not important. You're not goal-oriented. You don't interact with me correctly."

She was taken aback, slightly hurt at this characterization. "Richard, we never really negotiated terms formally, but if you want to revisit the specifics of our arrangement-"

" _No_. That right there is what I mean. That's not correct. You should be dictating terms, not offering to negotiate them."

Amari studied him unhappily. "I don't know what you want from me, Richard."

"I don't either. But, since you ask… can you leave now? I want to think some more."

She left him to his soul-searching.

* * *

The next morning, Lyons announced their plan to leave in six days, the amount of time judged appropriate for Reddin's recovery. The Sentinel grudgingly offered Richard and Amari an escort to Rivet City, perhaps deciding that the average of the two of them was worth taking a risk on in the field. As she said, "We're going there anyway. Part of an arrangement we have with that settlement. You two had as well tag along." In the meantime, Amari had the opportunity to get to know the people they'd fallen in among.

Lyon's Pride was like no other group Amari had met before. For an assortment of nine people of varying ages and temperaments, forced to coexist in close quarters, they projected an air of cohesion that she had seldom seen outside of a real family. Not her own family, granted, but one where the members actually respected each other. Even though she hadn't yet seen them in action, she imagined that the squad would be a formidable force to contend with.

There was Sentinel Lyons herself, the commander of the group despite the fact that she was younger than half of her lieutenants. She was, Amari eventually learned, the daughter of the Brotherhood's current leader, Owen Lyons. Like Amari herself, she had been tagged from birth with the expectation of leadership; unlike Amari, she was competent and enthusiastic for the task, a more than capable fighter with the force of will to manage the men and women under her. Amari envied her this confidence and the sense of purpose she'd inherited, and wished she'd had even a fraction of it herself. Things might have been different.

Paladin Emmanuel Vargas, her right-hand man, was a valuable counterpoint to Lyons' tendency to excess optimism. That this put him the unenviable position of being the no-nonsense stick-in-the-mud seemed not to bother him. When they conferenced together or discussed plans at mealtimes, Lyons listened to his counsel, even as the decisions that eventually came were her own to stand by.

Lazarus ("Laz") Glade and a bear of a man known simply as Kodiak were the other two with the rank of "paladin," which apparently meant something significant in the Brotherhood. They were both tall, powerfully-built men, the former ten or fifteen years older than the latter. Neither spoke very much, except to one another. They were distant but cordial toward Amari, which was more than she could say for some of the others. There was Vargas, for one, who generally treated her like invisible dirt. And then there was Dusk, who actively scorned her.

One of only three women in the group, and the best sniper, Knight Captain Dusk was the opposite of soft (or friendly, Amari decided after her overtures were rebuffed). Something about Amari's personality or presence rubbed the woman the wrong way, and Dusk's constant sneering in her direction only grew as she watched her fail the simulation, again and again. _I wasn't raised for this world_ , she wanted to tell the woman. _I expected to live and die in safety._ But she didn't say this, because it wasn't worth saying, and didn't help matters in the slightest to complain about it. Amari would never be the equal of a soldier like Dusk, but she could certainly do better than she had thus far. Needed to, at any rate.

Among the ranking officers, that left Knight Captain Duane Colvin, a warm, bizarrely-religious sniper who always had a good word for everybody, and Knight Captain Gallows, a stealthy, mysterious figure that no one seemed to know much about - not even his first name - though they unanimously respected his ability. Amari liked Colvin, although she found it strange that he prayed for the souls of the mutants as he "released them from their torment." Like everyone else, she didn't know what to make of Gallows.

Finally, there were the Initiates on the team, the happy-go-lucky Penny Reddin and her male counterpart, Oscar Jennings. They hid it well, but after watching them together in public a lot, Amari came to suspect that they were an item. The two of them - especially Penny - were the easiest to relate to. They were closest to her in age, and only a few years removed from civilian life. The three of them compared notes on their upbringings - Penny was an orphan from Rivet City and Oscar had grown up on a failed farm to the southwest. They both agreed that Amari had had it best, being raised in the vault, and she couldn't convince them otherwise. It was from them that Amari learned the most about the Brotherhood of Steel. And about the Outcasts.

Five of these, including Specialist Olin, now sat in the cells at the bottom of the bunker, awaiting transport back to the Brotherhood of Steel's base of operations, and their eventual trial there. A dozen members of the splinter group had discovered this building first, about a month earlier. However, unable to hack into armory via the simulation, and trapped by the mutants on the outside, they had fallen upon each other in violent schism days before Lyons' group had arrived. This culminated in a senseless, bloody conflict that left less than half of their group alive. The survivors were subdued, sullen, and grieving, and offered no resistance when a secondary group in gleaming power armor showed up on the fifth day to collect them and lead them away.

Richard continued to be distant and uncommunicative, even more so than he had been in Megaton. Beginning on the third day, he volunteered to go topside with some of the crew on regular patrols of the surface, hunting stragglers from the mutant pack. The rest of the time, he made himself scarce. They were almost never alone together and it felt as if he were avoiding her. Amari worried, wondering if this signaled his impending decision to leave her, but let him have his space. She didn't blame him for wanting to figure things out on his own. She could hardly imagine what it was like for him to be lacking so much of what made a person human.

For lack of anything better to do, Amari kept trying at the simulation - really trying now, with no more games. She didn't want to be seen as the weakling forever. She made it a little farther each day, but had still seen only about a third of the campaign by the end of the week. There were new ways to die on every level, and she found them all in the end. She went to the others for advice, and they mostly obliged, although all of their suggestions seemed to come down to "be a better soldier." Only Gallows, who still hadn't shown interest in doing the simulation a second time, had a suggestion she could use. He was a solitary man, not much given to boisterous fraternizing, and it took a long time for her to get up the courage to approach him. Late on the day before they were scheduled to leave, she finally got up the nerve.

"The thing you need to know about the simulation, civilian, is that it's designed to accommodate virtually anybody. _Any_ reasonably competent soldier, regardless of their specialization or lack thereof, _should_ have a chance at making it through. Now, _you_ are not reasonably competent, but you still need to identify your best skill, and invest your strategy fully in that. It doesn't have to be what me or Dusk or Lyons or anybody else would do. If you can actually complete the mission, it'll be with your skills, not ours. Understood?" It was an extremely long speech by his standards, and she took it to heart as she prepared for another try. She might not win, but she would lose as herself for once, not as a failed imitation of others.

* * *

When she climbed out of the pod, a very long time later, Amari was greeted with applause and a chorus of half-mocking, half-genuine cheers. Kodiak grinned and slapped her on the back, temporarily winding her, and Jennings put a beer in her hand. The others made room for her at the impromptu bar they'd set up in the workshop, and she took a seat, still feeling a heavy case of the unrealities from the subjective days she'd spent crawling through the snows of Anchorage.

"Well done." Flipping her ponytail over her shoulder, Lyons herself double-checked the readout on the screen, smiling wryly at what she found there. "Kind of. You finished. Even found two of the ten information caches. But it took you… let's see… _nine_ in-game days. An hour and a half without the artificial time dilation. That's about five times longer than the next slowest run on the board, but you fucking finished on your thirty-somethingth try, which means _some_ people win money. What the hell were you doing in there for all that time?"

"Completing the mission according to minimal parameters," Amari said primly, taking a drink, intensely glad to be back among real people. One part of her felt like she _had_ been gone for over a week, but another part knew that she had eaten dinner with them only a short time before. She had fully expected some good-natured ribbing, and now took it in stride, knowing that it was, in a way, a sign of their acceptance. She _wasn't_ a soldier like them. Nevertheless, she'd still - technically - completed the simulation, and she felt a rare glow of pride at the accomplishment. A cheap win was still a win.

Paladin Vargas wasn't smiling. He frowned at her choice of words. "What does that mean, wastelander? 'Minimal parameters'?"

She swallowed the sip and made herself respond to his rudeness in a neutral tone. "I didn't do it right, exactly. I used stealth every step of the way, and moved very, very slowly. The AI of the enemy is stupid, and if you're far enough away and well-hidden enough they eventually forget that you shot them. By taking your time, you can wear them down to nothing without ever attracting returning fire. Whenever possible, I let my companions soak up the unavoidable big fights. That's… how I roll. How I _have_ to, in order to survive. The more direct approach was _not_ working for me." She tried to make it into a joke. "That General Chase guy at the end wasn't at all happy with my performance. He said the computer was going to recommend me for an air-drop at the Manchurian front, whatever that means."

His frown only grew deeper at this explanation. "You had better not be aiming to hide like that in the Brotherhood's shadow. We have better things to do than to 'soak up' your fights."

"Vargas," Lyons said in a warning tone from her place across the table. "Be civil. Some of our scribes would have faced the problem the same way that she did, you know. There's nothing wrong with a lateral solution." She smiled at Amari for the first time. "I actually have a job in mind that's just right for someone who knows how to get in and out of enemy territory without being seen. Call it a little light recon. You up for a trek to the Citadel? You can come with us. A visit with my father and a job offer, with no strings attached. Safe passage there for you and Richard both, regardless of what you say when you hear it."

Amari considered the invitation, trying to ignore the glowering Paladin to Lyons' left. She still had to do right by James Wilder before she could move on with her life. Delivering the news of his daughter's death took precedence over everything else, but that _could_ fit into this plan. "We'll still stop at Rivet City first, right?"

The older woman nodded in reply. "And the GNR building by way of the Washington Monument. We'll show you _all_ the sights of this beautiful city. You can even take in the Jefferson Memorial as we cross the river, so long as you don't let its inhabitants catch sight of you." She became more serious. "Richard's superior fighting ability more than compensates for your lack of skill. On the condition that you do what you do best and make yourself scarce when we meet hostiles, I don't mind escorting a tourist like yourself."

Amari finished her beer and held out a hand for the other to shake. "It's a deal, then. I look forward to seeing what you people have made of the Pentagon."


	10. Living a Lie

Long ago, back when she was a shrinking violet named Amata, Amari had reluctantly lent her ears to a hamfisted lecture from another teenager, titled "The Behavior of Herbivores in a Group," as a part of her ongoing effort to act as a buffer between her best friend and the the rest of the vault. They'd both been sixteen at the time, and Marilyn had been in a perpetual state of agitation that year, the year of the GOAT exam, with the result that Amata often found herself thrust into the role of a peacemaker. In practical terms, this meant being on the receiving end of rants bashing the vault, the vault inhabitants in general, and the Overseer in particular.

On this occasion, her message had been straightforward to the point of being facile: namely, that the residents of the vault were like sheep following a blind old bellwether over a cliff. The oration was neither subtle nor well-composed, but the factual frame had at least been based on solid research. Amata had learned more about herding behavior that afternoon than she had ever wanted to know. One detail that had stuck in her mind, for whatever reason, was that large grazing animals - elephants, for example, a species long extinct even before the war - used to move in formations that kept the young and weak safely shielded on every side by adults armed with horns and tusks. Exactly what metaphorical significance Marilyn had taken from this truth, Amari could no longer remember. But she'd never forgotten the image.

Now, three years later, Amari felt like just such a helpless calf, plodding along on the hike from the metro exit to Rivet City. She could barely see the territory that they were moving through, so complete was the protective circle of the herd. All around her was a wall of steel soldiers, their augmented pace just fast enough to keep her moving at a uncomfortable trot.

Walking ahead of her, his longer legs adapting easily to the tanks' strides, Richard appeared perfectly at his ease, though it may have been the new rifle he had selected from the armory, another thank-you from Lyons. An energy weapon similar to the one he had lost, it suited him perfectly. He had not half the personality of any of their companions, she decided, but he was somewhat like them all the same. A masterful fighter, focused intently on the mission. Neither he nor any of the others would talk to her as they moved through the buildings of outer DC. It was dangerous, they explained in low tones, to attract unwanted attention so near the city.

"It's not just mutants we're wary of today. A group of mercenaries called Talon Company keeps a base on this side of the river, not far from here," Colvin told her on a mid-morning break in the lee of a crumbling office building. "They give us a wide berth, and official orders are for us to do the same, unless they attack us. You wouldn't want to walk these roads openly by yourself, though. They have no scruples whatsoever."

"I'm familiar with Talon. They're murderers-for-hire. I saw their work in Megaton," she told him. "Why won't the Brotherhood wipe them out?"

"Priorities, missy. Mutants are our primary concern. We don't have the numbers to fight a war on another front right now. Talon soldiers outnumber ours ten-to-one anyhow."

Though they were sometimes arrogant, stretched thin, and plagued with infighting, the Brotherhood were indeed Moira's "good guys" in Amari's judgment. A civilizing force for the wasteland, however, they were not. If there was a problem, they shot at it for a while before retreating to their Citadel to lick their wounds before trying again. Even the decision to protect the GNR radio station - arguably the best bet at providing a collective sense of unity to the scattered communities of the DC area - was a controversial one, according to the Sentinel. Many within the Brotherhood would have preferred to focus on shoring up their own defenses rather than risking their resources abroad for outsiders. Even so, Elder Lyons' insisted on this course of action.

Lyons' Pride were the faction's main emissaries to the larger communities - those that accepted this partnership, that is - and this gesture took the form of quarterly visits and patrols and the occasional exchange of technology. Rivet City, from which the Brotherhood sometimes recruited, was one of these communities. Their group was expected, it seemed, as the guards up on the deck waved hello as they drew near. Lyons' wasn't ready to go inside yet, however. The day was only half over and they had work to do in the area.

"We'll spend the daylight patrolling and the nights camped out on the flight deck, but we would appreciate you leaving us to our business. We leave for GNR at 0800 the day after tomorrow. And Amari," Lyons warned her at the gates, "be out here, ready to go, or we'll have to leave you behind." She added in a kinder tone, "I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for."

"We're going to go kill some mutants!" Penny said, patting Amari on the arm in parting. "Wish us luck!"

"Luck," said Amari quietly, watching them move away, down the shore and back toward the memorial they had passed at a distance earlier. She and Richard stood still for a moment, alone together for the first time in days. She turned away and began climbing the steps to the gangplank above.

As she waited for security to extend the bridge, Amari turned to her companion. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'd like to go talk to him - if he's here - by myself. I'm planning to rent a room for two nights, so you can hang out there or explore the ship or whatever you want. We'll go looking for Pinkerton tonight or tomorrow."

He nodded, apparently unconcerned one way or another.

"I wish you would care about this," she told him in a low voice, not wanting the guards ahead to hear. "I don't know if he's a neurologist, a psychiatrist, or what, but it's worth a shot. I'm trying to _help_ you, Richard."

He didn't answer.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, she stood alone at the end of a corridor, trying to muster up the courage to open the door in front of her. She mentally reviewed what little the brusque female guard had told her about James. _The name sounds familiar. Ask Dr. Li. In the Science Lab at the back_. She knew what she needed to know. But she couldn't walk through. Not yet.

"I'm sorry. It happened so quickly, I couldn't do anything," she rehearsed, addressing the closed door in a small voice. "Mari asked me to go with her. And fuck me, I said 'yes'..." She trailed off, choked up. "I can't do this."

"Is everything alright, young lady?"

She jumped. A man had materialized behind her, likely from one of the many rooms off the main corridor. The off-white coat reminded her of James and Jonas, but his dirty fingernails and the smell of tobacco reminded her of how far she was from home.

"It's fine," she mumbled. "I have to give someone some bad news. That's all."

"Best just to get it over with," he suggested. "Just like ripping a bandage off. If you want, I can prescribe you a mild sedative."

"No, thank you," she said politely. "I owe it to him to be fully present."

"Carry on, then." With that, he was gone, the door closed behind him. Amari belatedly read the sign on the door, learning that this was the location of the Rivet City clinic. Embarrassed to be caught talking to herself, she squared her shoulders and tried again.

 _Right_. _I've done scarier things than this. I caught an Eyebot, I confronted Moriarty in front of his friends, I shot a super mutant!_ Fortified by the reminders of past courage, she stepped into the lab. There were a lot of people inside, she realized immediately. Her eyes caught a glimpse of a man with iron-gray hair bending over a table across the room, and she inhaled sharply, before sagging in disappointed relief. No, it wasn't him at all. Too short, too old. She took another step into the room, and then another, still scanning for a familiar face.

" _Finally_ ," an irritable voice announced from down below. "You're here. Now I don't have to hold this package for you any longer." This remark came from a middle-aged Asian woman in a lab coat, wearing a severe bun and a permanent scowl on her face. Amari froze. She'd steeled herself for a very different sort of confrontation and didn't know how to respond to the unexpected. She continued down the steps, keeping a puzzled expression on her face to mask the anxiety churning in her stomach.

The stranger reached into a cabinet and pulled out a box. "First the password. Who was James' wife?"

Growing up, Amari had spent more time with the Wilders than she had with her own family. She knew the answer - had heard the name spoken aloud more than her own mother's, in fact. "Catherine. She was Catherine. But I-"

The woman shoved a box into her arms, interrupting her. "Here you go. He left this for you. Medicine, caps, a gun. Miscellany." She studied Amari severely. "Good thing, too. I see you're not armed, and that's not a good idea, even here in Rivet City. How did you make it this far?"

"I found some allies. The Brotherhood-"

" _Pah!_ The Brotherhood of Steel. I don't trust them, not a bit." The woman eyed her critically. "You have your mother's coloring," she said uncharitably, "but you truly don't look much like either of them. It's a pity. She was a beauty."

Stung by this remark, she began again. "I'm not Mar-"

The woman spoke over her, not even hearing this attempt at a confession. "Your father was angry when he heard you'd left the vault. He tried to hide it, but I could tell. He left you there so you'd be safe. Did you really think you were doing the right thing by coming out to look for him?"

Anger finally mastered surprise, and left honesty by the wayside. "Safe? My father… the Overseer went crazy when he found out that someone had broken the seals. People _died_ that morning. He _tortured_ me. My best friend was killed in front of me. I had no home after that day. Who the hell are _you_ to lecture me about what was _safe_?" Her arms, the back of her neck, her stomach ached with remembered pain. She shook at the memory of what her father had done… what he had allowed Officer Mack to do to her. All because they thought she knew something. All because James Wilder had gotten itchy feet. "Seriously, who are you? And where is he?" Anger gave her the strength and confidence to speak without hesitation. She forgot, for the moment, that she was an imposter.

Shock stopped the other woman cold. She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. When she spoke again, she had lost most of her haughtiness. "I… had no idea. Neither did he, I'm sure. I'm Dr. Madison Li, an old friend and colleague of James and Catherine. He stayed here for a while, waiting for you, and left about six weeks ago. He lingered as long as he felt he could. He was impatient to continue his work."

"He left," Amari repeated dully. "To continue his work. What work?"

"Project Purity. He wanted to provide clean drinking water to the Capital Wasteland…" Amari listened with the half of her mind that still cared, her arms growing tired from holding the heavy box in front of her. James Wilder, it seems, had been working on a massive project with Dr. Li and others. Based out of the Jefferson Memorial, they had aspired to build and activate a massive water purifier. This plan had been disrupted by a one-two series of events, as Dr. Li explained.

"Your birth. Catherine's death. The mutant attacks were getting worse. I begged him to stay, but he was afraid he was going to lose the last of his family if he didn't take drastic measures. So he abandoned us. Our dream. You mattered more than anything else did to him."

Amari felt sick. All that effort, to find the vault and hide away, just so his baby girl could grow up and die, and rip a hole in the vault's fragile community in the process. "All that for nothing," she commented aloud, her mouth twisting as she tried to keep from crying.

The other looked back blankly. "Well, not for _nothing_. You're here, aren't you?"

"Yeah. I am." Setting the box down, she pinched the bridge of her nose hard. A headache was threatening to come on, a daily occurance since her misadventure with the grenade. She'd lost most of her desire to tell this person the truth. What did it matter? She'd probably never see Dr. Li again. "Okay. I'll go find him. Where did he go? Back to the Jefferson Memorial?" The presence of the Brotherhood in that area would probably make it easy to access today. If not, she and Richard could probably make their way through. She needed to be shed of this burden, once and for all.

"No. He went there first - to see the state of what was left - and then he came back here. He said he needed something called a GECK. He thought he might be able to find one in Vault 112. Here, I have a map somewhere…" Dr. Li marked the location on her Pip Boy, and Amari groaned inwardly. It was far - much farther west than she had ever gone, or hoped to go. Moira had called it dangerous country. In one of her less tactful moments, she had admitted that she was waiting for a truly competent assistant to send in that direction. It was definitely a "Here There Be Deathclaws" region of the map.

Amari decided then that she needed to get out of the science lab before she did or admitted something that she regretted. "Right. Thanks. Do you know where I can find someone named Pinkerton?"

Some of the hauteur came back at this point. Dr. Li wrinkled her nose. "I'm not sure what you would want with _him_. He's a kook. A madman. The last I'd heard, he was living in the broken bow of the ship."

"Thanks," Amari said again automatically. "You've been very helpful." Her legs moved of their own accord; her body felt numb but it was still carrying out instructions. She took her box, noticing with a sinking feeling that there were holotapes in there that she'd probably have to listen to, and turned to go.

Back in the room that she'd rented for the two of them, Richard had found a book - something thick and old, from the looks of it - and had read a quarter of it in the short time that she'd been gone, turning pages at an inhuman rate. She wondered if he was actually reading or if he was just fanning the paper to amuse himself. He barely looked up when she stepped through the door. Amari, in turn, said nothing, but focused on exploring her ill-gotten gains. She set the box on one of the twin beds and rifled through the contents. A 10mm pistol. Some ammo. Another fifty caps. _If I still have that much when I find him, I'll give it back to him,_ she promised without much resolve. A stealth boy in good condition. The box also contained medical supplies, including - thankfully - a bottle of acetaminophen. She helped herself to a couple, hoping it would take the edge off the nauseating pounding in her head. Underneath everything else lay a dozen holotapes and a sealed letter.

Lying down, moving as little as possible, she worked listlessly through the holotapes, closing her eyes and letting the familiar voice wash over her. She'd always associated that voice with calm and stability, an association that now seemed somewhat ironic in retrospect. Some of the tapes were numbered; some weren't. She made no attempt to put them into chronological sequence but instead listened to them in the order that she picked them up. Half were more than twenty years old - from before Marilyn's birth - and confirmed or supplemented what Dr. Li had told her about the events surrounding "Project Purity." The others were recent, mostly James' personal reflections on leaving the vault to pick up where he had left off and why he thought Vault 112 held the answer. They were all fairly personal. Amari felt dirty, like a voyeur peeking in at James' and Catherine's lives, but she couldn't stop herself until she got to the third from the last:

" _Well, here we are again. Project Purity and me. It's been close to twenty years since my last entry. Since I left all of this behind to make a life for my daughter. We spent all that time in Vault 101, tucked away from the rest of the world. It wasn't perfect, but it was safe, and that's all I could have hoped for. Now, my daughter is a grown woman. Beautiful, intelligent, confident. Just like her mother. And as hard as it was to admit it, she doesn't need her daddy anymore…_ "

Amari shut off the player, tore the tape out, and dropped it - and the unopened letter - back into the box with the rest, before rolling over and burying her face in the musty old pillow. The nice thing about Richard, she told herself, was that you could trust him not to bother you when you were miserable. She had as well have been an unusually depressed piece of a furniture for all the attention he paid her outburst. This was good. Otherwise, this might have been _awkward_. As it was, she could still hear him turning pages over the sound of her own muffled sobs.

It wasn't just rekindled grief that had burst the floodgates. It had just occurred to her - for the first time, somehow - that she couldn't imagine her own father recording such a message for or about her. What would _he_ say if he could send her a letter? Probably something along of the lines of "Don't come home. You deserve whatever happens to you out there." Even that would have been preferable to what she _had_ gotten from him, which was nothing. All those months she'd been living only a few miles away, and he'd sent her no word at all - and he was the one person in the vault who actually had the authority to send a message to the outside. Was he _that_ committed to the lie? _We're born in the vault. We'll die in the vault. Nobody leaves the vault._ He must have been. How else could she explain his behavior?

Exhausted, she cried herself into a troubled dream in which she forced her way back into the vault, the Brotherhood of Steel at her back, only to find it empty. She left Lyons and the rest waiting impatiently by the entrance while she roamed the halls, calling the names of her teachers, her cousins, and her former classmates. She then set to searching the walls themselves, using Floyd Lewis's abandoned tools to peel back the metal skin which covered the wiring and insulation, when Penny - at least she thought it was Penny, though it was hard to tell behind the mask - came up behind her.

"Sarah says we have to go now. You're the Overseer now. Don't forget about Richard!"

 _Who could forget about Richard?_ she was about to snap back, when an entire section of wall fell off with a crash, revealing a cache of bones in the dark space beyond and jolting her out of her dream. She woke up to find that she'd accidentally knocked the box off the bed, spilling its contents everywhere. She stooped to pick them up, looking over to find Richard sitting and watching her, his book either finished or laid aside. "Were you watching me sleep?"

He shrugged. "You seemed restless."

"Please don't. It's creepy," she told him She checked the time and groaned. So much for dinner. Well, there was still some food left in her bag, or at least there had been before.

"I ate the last of the food," Richard told her when he saw her digging through their supplies.

Quashing the frustration that threatened to bubble up - of course he had the right to eat their food - she quickly changed her plans. "Oh. Okay. I'm going to go down to the restaurant, then. Do you want to come with me?"

"Are you ordering me to come?" he asked languidly.

Amari had finally had enough. "So that's a no?" she shot back. "I just thought you might be bored. You can stay here and and stare at the wall for all I care. Good _night_."

Two minutes later, her steps echoing down the long, empty corridor to the market, she wished she _had_ asked, or ordered, him to come. She felt vulnerable and conspicuous here as a solitary woman. The weight of the pistol on her hip helped, but _she_ knew it was mostly for show, and she suspected anybody else would as well.

Ten yards short of the hatch, two men slammed clumsily through the floor, large, drunk, and unsteady. Cringing away from them, she pressed herself against the wall to let them pass. This amused them for some reason, and she could hear their laughter long after they had disappeared around the corner.

Fighting the urge to run back to their the room and slam the door, she made herself turn the handle and push open the door. It was late, a quarter after 10 by her block, and the market was a different place now, dimmer, quieter, and much cooler. Other than a handful of guards, and a few customers huddled in a puddle of light around Gary's Galley, it was deserted.

A young woman with tired eyes looked up as Amari approached the counter. Stifling a yawn, she asked, "What'll it be?"

"What do you have to eat?" Amari asked. She'd risk even dodgy food at this point, as long as it was heated through. Her early lunch eaten on the move seemed a long time ago now.

"Uh... there's cold broth with half an inch of congealed grease on it, but we're saving it to jump-start the flavor on tomorrow's soup. I recommend booze. We don't really do food after 7 or so."

 _Remind me never to eat here_ , she thought with dismay. Before she could decline, a familiar voice at her elbow chimed in, "She'll have a whiskey. Same as me. Put them both on my tab."

The woman heaved an exasperated sigh. "For the last time, Mr. Doe, no tabs for outsiders. Caps up front."

Amari looked to her right. Somehow, she wasn't surprised to find Deacon here, looking as tired and depressed as she felt. "I'm not really in a drinking mood right now," she told him.

He dropped the money on the table and picked up his drinks. "Then I'll drink 'em both. Follow me. I've got the _best_ table. You'll love it."

Deacon's table turned out to be on the catwalk above the restaurant, overlooking the whole cavernous space. In the short walk between the bar and her chair, Amari changed her mind about the whiskey, and reached across the table to take it from him.

"Thanks for the drink, Mr. Doe. Of all the pseudonyms in the world, _that's_ the one you're going with right now?"

He didn't smile. "It is indeed. Sometimes I run out of creative aliases." He tossed his drink back and looked at her, the lenses of his sunglasses mirroring her tiny reflection back at her. He was waiting for her to say something, and she thought she knew what.

She sipped her own drink to fortify herself for the conversation, enjoying the heady feeling it gave her. "I guess you heard what happened," she started, looking down and using a fingernail to trace the profanity etched into the tabletop in front of her. Had it really only been a week and change since Moira died? It felt like much longer.

"That my oldest living friend and best ally in the Capital Wasteland is dead? Yeah, I figured that out when I got to Megaton to find a pack of suppurating assholes fighting each other over her stuff. At least that sheriff had the good graces to tell me what happened. You, what, took her money and ran?"

Amari wondered what version of the story he had gotten, and from whom. "I did. I didn't have a choice. That was after I helped deal with the guy who had her murdered."

"Colin Moriarty." He pronounced the syllables slowly and deliberately. "I should have known that business wasn't over. I got the story about you and him from Moira last time. Man knew how to bide his time. What brought it all to a head?"

She told him about Silver's money, and Moriarty's subsequent attempt on her life, and the contract he had made with Talon Company. Deacon excused himself halfway through and brought up another round of drinks, a double this time. Tongue loosened by the liquor, she confessed something that she had admitted only to herself since that terrible day.

"...and I _know_ I'm to blame, Deacon. What happened in Megaton happened because I was there as a catalyst. He was always the kind of person who _might_ try something like that, but I can't help but think that I forced his hand a little. That the stuff I was doing made him feel like he had to consolidate his position to save face."

When he had nothing to say to this, she pressed on, "Please believe me when I say I didn't expect him to take such drastic measures. I really thought Moira was safe, because she never went far from town. I didn't mean to get her killed. She stuck her neck out for me when I was in a bad place, and it cost her. Even though she got on my nerves sometimes, I liked her. I miss her."

Deacon considered his glass, and tipped the last drop of liquor down his throat. "I believe you. You didn't pull the trigger. You tried to remedy the situation. I don't blame you. I'm just sick of losing friends. It gets to you after a while." He stacked up their empty glasses and stood up. "I'm going to get one more round. Do you want another or are you done?"

Amari liked the idea of another drink, even though it was hitting her hard on an empty stomach. "I'll get it this time," she said, standing up a little too quickly, and making the tiny table wobble.

"Be careful on the stairs!" he called after her.

He accepted the drink that she successfully delivered without spilling, raising his eyebrows at the amount she'd ordered. "What's your room number, Amari?"

"Oh, I don't want to have sex with you," she said, more gracelessly than she meant. "Besides, I have a roommate. A very strong, very awkward roommate who doesn't get social cues."

He managed to look both pained and amused. "Ouch. Shot down before I even _ask_. No, I just wanted to know where I'll be carrying you at the end of this delightful tête-à-tête."

"It's the one that _this_ goes to." She held up the key that the hotel manager had given her, a shiny number 16 hanging off the fob. "And don't worry. I'm fine." She let her head fall back, enjoying the upside-down view and the dizzy rush that came with it. "I mean, I'm not used to alcohol and I haven't eaten for about twelve hours, but still. I'm _amazing_."

"If you say so." He was laughing at her. _Great._ "You should be careful drinking in the company of strange men, you know. Didn't your mother ever tell you that?"

She giggled without knowing why. "My mother ne'er told me _anything_. But _you're_ not strange. You're nice."

"That's me. A born gentleman." He looked out over the deserted shops, keeping his eyes fixed on something or someone far across the room. Amari sat up straight and sipped her drink - more slowly this time - and let the silence stretch for a full two minutes before she asked the obvious question, enunciating carefully to keep her voice from slurring.

"What are you doing here, Deacon?"

He became quiet and serious. "I have to keep my eye on someone for a few days. A newcomer from my neck of the woods. I just need to make sure he's okay, and stays okay. Gives me an excuse to sit up here and watch the world go by. Compared to my day job, this is a vacation."

"Who are you spying on?"

"That's need-to-know, my friend. You don't. What are _you_ doing here, anyway?"

"Coupla' things. I'm trying to find someone. Two different someones, actually. _Who_ exactly is need-to-know."

"How tantalizingly vague. Any luck?"

"I know where to start looking. On both of 'em." She sighed. "I know you don't care, but can I tell you something? I did something bad, and it's eating me up inside."

"I guess I have one of those faces," he lamented. "I'm the kind of guy people want to confess stuff to. Maybe I was a priest in a former life. Go on then."

"It all started on the the day I left the vault..." she began, explaining how the lie started, and how it grew and grew until she'd lost hold of it entirely. "...and that brings us to today, when I let the lie continue just so I could pick up the package that James left for Marilyn."

"Yeah, that's pretty fucked up," Deacon said mildly, examining his nails. "I don't know how you can live with yourself."

Amari picked up her forgotten drink again. "So you think I should come clean to Dr. Li?" she asked anxiously.

He shook his head. "Oh, _hell_ no. She might take the stuff back. Besides, it's not like your friend's ever going to use it, right?"

"No, but… it's _wrong_ , me coasting on her reputation to make it out here."

Deacon leaned forward, fixing her with that intense stare of his. "Maybe I missed something, but except with her dad, Marilyn doesn't _have_ a reputation outside of the vault, right? Whoever you are, that's one-hundred-percent you. Not her."

Not to be dissuaded, she continued doggedly, "I am who I am because I stole her identity. Did things the way I thought she would."

"Didn't even take her _name_. That's weak-sauce identity theft, there. Look, _kid,_ " he began, "and yes, I can call you that because when I was your age, I was a kid. Married and all, but still a goddamned kid. That do-gooder character Three Dog's been talking up on the radio is at least sort of based on you. It's a shame that everybody and their dog - including you, somehow - thinks that the 'Lone Wanderer' is some doctor's daughter, because that's selling you short."

Amari didn't want to be let off the hook that easily. "It's also setting him up for some delayed grief," she pointed out.

"That too," he admitted. "That's the one thing I'd hold you to account for, _if_ you weren't actively trying to bring him the news in person. I'm all for self-flagellation - I've made a career out of it, in fact - but it seems to me that you're doing the best you can."

"She was better than me, you know. In literally every way." Bold, interesting, and strong. Ambitious. That was Marilyn. Everything _she_ wasn't. "I bet _she_ could have finished the simulation without cheating."

He scratched his head. "I don't know what _that_ means, but whether she was all that or not doesn't matter now. You get that, right?"

She didn't answer this. "Lone Wanderer." Amari tasted the word out loud. "That's a stupid title. I haven't done much wandering. I'm not alone. Never have been. I have Richard, and for the last week I've had Sarah Lyons' group watching out for me."

"Sarah's not a bad sort, as far as the Brotherhood goes," he said comfortably. "And nicknames are good. Take it from a guy who knows. Gives you an escape hatch if someone paints a target on your back. Methinks the disc jockey had a character in mind, and decided to build it on on a convenient foundation, which just happened to be you. Don't let his idealistic ramblings push you into stupid feats of heroism. Who is Richard, by-the-by?"

Amari tried to think how best to describe her companion. "A friend. Well, a person. A very helpful person. Sort of a bodyguard."

"Your roomie who doesn't get social cues? I'd like to meet this guy."

"That's him." She yawned. "You probably wouldn't. No one really likes him. People find him unnerving. He's got some brain damage. Makes him weird and off-putting."

"I've probably met worse," he commented quietly. "Hey, so, I know I said to ignore idealistic ramblings, but I've got a pitch of my own for you. The bulk of it should probably wait until tomorrow, but as a start, since you're in an honest frame of mind… how do you feel about AI rights?"

"AI?" she asked, a little too loudly.

He put a finger to his lips. "Artificial intelligence," he answered patiently. "Sentient machines."

"Uhhh… maybe I'm the wrong person to ask. I kind of helped Moira brutalize an eyebot for science. I was not a fan of the protectron at Megaton's gate. And I never liked the Mr. Handy we had in the vault. It ruined almost everything it touched."

He smiled. "I'm not talking about those. But let's say, taking your last example, that your Mr. Handy became self-aware - conscious of its own existence, with likes, dislikes, hopes, and fears of its own. Humanlike enough to pass for human in dialogue, if not in appearance. Should that Mr. Handy be given the autonomy and rights due a 'real' person?"

"I don't know, Deacon. I've never thought about that before." Her eyelids were getting heavy, and she tried to focus on his face, but something was wrong with her eyes. "Why d'you ask?"

He persisted. "Moira never brought it up? Never mentioned the Railroad?" Half to himself, he muttered under his breath, but loud enough for her to hear, "I knew she wasn't the recruiting type, but c'mon. What was she thinking? You're perfect."

 _The Railroad._ This rang a bell. "She was going to. The day she… died. We never got to that conversation." This reminded her of something she had wanted to ask Deacon - maybe he knew more about Pinkerton - but she held her tongue, worried it might require more of an explanation that she was capable of. "I'd _like_ to know more, but I'm very, very tired."

Deacon sighed. "Tomorrow, then. I'll tell you what she didn't get around to. It's important. Can we talk in the morning?"

"I got other stuff to do, but… sure. Anything you like. You want me to do something for you, right? Just like everybody else..." This came out sounding like an accusation, but she didn't really mean it that way. Deacon was well on his way to becoming her favorite living person in the world. She almost wished that she hadn't preemptively declined to sleep with him.

He had the shame to look away, but continued anyway. "You seem like a decent sort who's drifting at the moment. When you've finished walking the tortuous path you've set for yourself, I'd like you to consider drifting our way. Almost everybody I work with has some sort of personality disorder. You would fit right in." He held out his hands in a pleading gesture. "Perks include a ready-made family, a sense of purpose, and good karma. No retirement package, though."

There had been an insult hidden in there somewhere, she was sure, but Amari couldn't put her finger on it. She decided it didn't really matter. "I'd like to sleep on it. Now, if possible. Before I pass out here."

"Sure. They're about to close the marketplace, anyway. I'll walk you to your door." Deacon cast one more look across the room - at whom, Amari didn't really care at the moment - and offered her a courteous hand up.

* * *

She didn't quite remember getting back to her room or going to bed. She certainly never got around to changing her clothes or even taking off her shoes. Wakefulness brought regret and embarrassment. Also misery. Luckily, there was a bucket in the room. Amari huddled on the floor, hugging it to herself, mumbling in between heaves, "Cause and effect, girl, cause and effect. You could have seen this coming…"

Someone knocked on the door. Someone who was _whistling._ It hurt. She looked up beseechingly at Richard, who was ignoring her, engrossed as he was in a two-hundred-year-old phone book. "Can you answer that, please?" He had half-risen before she changed her mind. Whoever it was might want to talk, and Richard wasn't good at that. "Never mind, I'll get it. Jus' stay there."

Deacon stood in the hallway, a shiteating grin pasted on his face. "Morning, sunshine. I'm _so_ glad I caught you before you started in on your very important to-do list. You made it sound so urgent that I knew I just _had_ to get here early."

She squinted at her Pip-Boy. _Was_ it early? She couldn't tell. "How are you so… happy?"

"Lots of practice." He held up a greasy bundle wrapped in old newsprint. "I brought food. Nice, greasy food. Enough for three. Can I come in?"

She swallowed the bile rising her throat, and managed only a single syllable of an answer. "Ugh."

He took that as an invitation and stepped over the threshold. Something in his face changed when he saw Richard in the chair behind her. The smile disappeared, he let the food fall to the floor, and he stepped back into the hallway without taking his eyes off of the other man.

"On second thought, can I talk to you in the corridor? Please?"

He pulled her out and slammed the door behind her. Amari flinched under the bright lights in the hallway, holding her head between her hands. "Deacon, what-"

He was angry and afraid, and his sharp voice bored threatened to crack her skull in two. "Amari, _why_ is there an Institute Courser in your room?"


	11. One Soul to Go, Please

"Amari, _why_ is there an Institute Courser in your room?" No longer the easy-going joker she knew, Deacon was intense and _angry_ , like he would shake the answer out of her if she didn't give it up. He stopped just short of grabbing her again, and she realized dimly that he wasn't just mad - he was _afraid_. Terrified, actually.

"A what?" she asked. Or, at least, that's what she _tried_ to ask. A horrible cramp doubled her over, and for the fiftieth time since she'd woken up, she found herself heaving up nothing but bitter yellow stomach acid. Black specks swam in front of her eyes, drowning out whatever Deacon was saying to her, and she rested her forehead on the cool metal of the floor, sick and humiliated.

"A Courser," he said roughly. "A killing machine. Who the hell _are_ you?"

"I'm just me. The only person in there is Richard. What did you call him?"

"He didn't even change his _clothes_ ," Deacon hissed. "That _armor_. Those _glasses_. This is bad. This is very bad. Do you know what you've done by bringing him here?"

"He's not dangerous, Deacon." Amari stood up again, leaning one shaky hand on the door. "Not to me. Not to you unless you're really threatening me. I really have to go back in there. I'm gonna…"

Richard chose this moment to open the door, nearly knocking her over, and making Deacon's hand flinch toward the gun on his hip.

"Is this man bothering you?" he asked her meaningfully.

"Oh, so _now_ you care?" she sniped. "No, he's not bothering me. Richard, this is… John Doe. John, this is Richard. Richard Deckard. Lemme in, Rich…" She just made it this time.

"Is that the name he told you?" Deacon asked, following her in, as stiff-legged and alert as a dog circling for a fight.

Amari spat into the bucket again. "Nope. That was Moira's suggestion _._ Knew it was an inside joke for her amusement, but she wouldn't tell me what it was. Stop asking me questions, please. My head is killing me."

Despite the tension in the room, Richard had gone back to his chair and his phone book, leafing through the pages like none of this mattered. Deacon stared at him for a long moment, mumbling under his breath about Moira and her fucked-up sense of humor. Finally, he appeared to come to a decision.

"Okay, okay, _okay_. One hour. Our table. Eat that crappy taco, drink some water, and _come_. Alone. The Courser… Richard... stays _here_. Jesus _Christ_ , vaultie. You have no idea what you've gotten yourself involved in here."

* * *

Fifty-five minutes later, with some medicine kicking in, Amari felt a little less like death warmed over. The flatbread had been greasy and the meat mysterious, but at least it was hot, and hopefully safe to eat. She felt well enough to make the walk back to the marketplace, leaving Richard to his own incurious devices. Part of her had wanted to lock the door and hide away - Deacon's unexpected intensity frightened her - but the other part of her wanted answers. One more look back at Richard, who had now almost finished the useless tome, convinced her. _She_ might be able to live with the mystery, but he couldn't. Not forever.

She found Deacon, cigarette and whiskey in hand hand, standing and glaring moodily down at a pair of security guards as if they had personally affronted him.

Her stomach lurched at the sight of the liquor. "How can you drink today?"

"Oh you sweet summer child," he said by way of an answer. He seemed calmer now that he was away from Richard. "Have a seat. Tell me the truth. Did you _really_ not know what he was?"

Tired of the condescension and confusion, Amari was out of patience. "Don't patronize me. Or interrogate me. I haven't done anything wrong… not with regard to Richard, anyway. Just tell me what you - and Moira - knew as soon as you saw him. Who is he?"

"He's a synth," Deacon said simply. "Not just that, he's a Courser - a Gen-3 built and trained for the Institute's heavy lifting. He's a marvel of modern engineering. One of the finest machines ever built by human hands."

"I understood some of those words. But you're not saying that you think he's a robot or something?" Amari had always known that Moira was a little crazy. That Deacon might be as well was something she hadn't previously considered. "He's obviously human. I've seen him bleed. Felt his pulse. Just _look_ at him. The man has to _shave_ , for crying out loud. He's not wearing a mask or anything, if that's what you think."

"With an ordinary Gen-3, you have to know exactly what to look for," Deacon explained in a would-be patient tone that sounded slightly strained. "It's the little things. The way they walk, the way they talk, that look in their eye when they think no one else is watching. Once they get the behaviors down pat, they appear very human. A Courser, on the other hand - particularly a Courser who didn't bother to shuck off his Institute-issued armor - has a harder time playing coy."

He stood up again and gestured for Amari to join him in overlooking the restaurant. Speaking very quietly now, he inclined his head toward the tables. "Down there. There are two men eating breakfast below us. Chief Harkness on the left and Officer Altman on the right. One of them is a synth, a former Courser. Which one do you think it is?"

Amari humored him by studying the two men from their discrete vantage point. Harkness was a powerful-looking man, well-built and well-fed. He was also one of the tallest people she had yet seen in the Wasteland, with only a couple of Lyons' crew for his equal. Altman was nothing special. Scrawny and short, he reminded her of Butch in some subtle way. He looked like the kind of punk who would let a little authority go to his head. "The tall one," she said lightly. "If I was going to make a killer robot, he would definitely look more like him."

"You jest, but you're right. Six weeks ago, Chief Harkness walked out of the wasteland with a sad backstory and a wealth of combat experience in hand. The good people of Rivet City took him in with open arms. They got a capable protector. He got a home. Everybody's happy, except for the Institute. They've lost one of their soldiers. I'm hanging around to make sure his new programming stays seamless and smooth for the first week of his new promotion. There have been… incidents in the past."

"Deacon…" How was she to say _you're insane_ in a nice way? She tried to be kind. "I can tell you have a lot on your mind right now. I need to track down someone named Pinkerton today, so unless you have proof of what you're talking about, I'm going to go."

"Pinkerton," he echoed, surprise flickering over his tired features. "What do you know about Pinkerton?"

What _did_ she know about Pinkerton? "He's a neurologist or something. Moira mentioned him. Said that maybe he could help Richard."

"He _does_ have a medical background - and he'll do surgery on you to prove it - but he's more of a programmer. I can introduce you. _After_ you accept a basic premise and everything that follows: synths exist. Richard is a synth. This situation is so much more dangerous than you know." Casting his gaze around, as if for inspiration, his eyes landed on the door leading to the hotel, which had just opened. "Case in point walking in now," he muttered. "Act natural. Don't look behind you."

Two men passed them on their way down to the floor below, a sour-faced prune in a dusty suit and a hulking shadow that could only be his bodyguard. Amari thought she remembered the older one from the lab the previous day.

Deacon let out a long breath once they had gone by. "Be supremely glad those two haven't laid eyes on your friend yet. _That_ would make for an interesting day. The geezer is Dr. Zimmer, lately of the Institute. Muscles there is yet _another_ Courser on this boat right now - isn't this fun? - and they're here after some lost property."

"Say I believe you." Amari wasn't ready to concede that point at all, but it seemed necessary to advance the conversation. "What's in it for you?" A disturbing thought occurred to her. "You don't believe _you're_ a robot, do you?"

He laughed at this, though there was a bitter edge to it. "I don't _think_ any of the Railroad's various techs would have given me the backstory I live with. If they did, then they should be applauded for their creativity and strung up for their cruelty. No, I'm just a guy. Trying to do the right thing by humans, synths, and everything in between."

"How noble." She didn't care if he heard the sarcasm or not. Even given his premise, she wasn't buying the altruism card. Wasn't that the first lesson she'd learned out here - that everyone was in it for themselves? And Deacon was a liar. She knew that. He _must_ have another game going.

He gave her a pained grin. "That's me. So let's talk about Richard."

"Let's. You're not making sense. You say that… you want to help synths. People like him. But you - and Moira, for that matter - hated him on sight. What gives?"

Another tolerant sigh, and he continued with the air of someone explaining the patently obvious. "He's a Courser I hadn't accounted for, dressed exactly like the ones I've seen kill so many of my friends. Prejudice took over, I admit, but my fear's not irrational. Richard may not be under Institute control, but he's still an unknown variable to me. A potentially deadly one."

"And Moira had the same thoughts?"

"Moira's got… _had_ a slightly different story, but yeah. Basically. Her grandfather was killed in a nasty incident about fifty years ago in a settlement called Diamond City, so she grew up knowing what synths can do to people. Before she came here, she hung around with my people enough to know what Coursers looked like. What _did_ she want to do with Richard?"

" _She_ wanted to leave him to die in the wastes." Amari was still indignant at the memory. "Wouldn't let him in her house. Apparently, because she thought he was a machine. You people are crazy."

"Right, yeah, we are. For good reason, though. O-kay..." He ran a nervous hand over his smooth-shaved head, and then appeared to shift strategies. "Let's make small talk until Zimmer finishes his breakfast and goes back to the lab. Then, I'll take you and your buddy to see Pinkerton and you'll have your answers. In the meantime, tell me: what does Richard like to _do_?"

* * *

An hour later, Amari found herself struggling to convince her companion to go anywhere with her. In the end, she had to _order_ him to follow her, as an apprehensive Deacon looked on from the entrance.

"Also, you have to…" she trailed off as Richard looked down at her, and, as if she'd been infected by Deacon's paranoia, she too was afraid of him. "Take off your coat. Please," she whispered. Slowly, but without complaint, he did so. Without his armor, he looked a little more like the other men she knew, but still… she had to admit that Deacon had a point. He was _different._ Almost otherworldly in his strangeness.

"And the shades, old boy," Deacon added in a faux-hearty voice from somewhere behind her. "It's a _chic_ look, I know, but oh-so-recognizable." Richard acted like he hadn't even heard Deacon, and Amari had to repeat it as an imperative.

They passed through the corridor without meeting a soul. Halfway across the marketplace, however, they met a snag in the form of Chief Harkness.

"Here's those visitors I've been hearing about! Friends of yours, Johnny?" Chief Harkness was just as impressive up close, and Amari found herself covertly comparing him to Richard. The newcomer was white under his tan, with a toothy smile that contrasted with the other's perpetual frown, but they were an even match otherwise.

"Sure are," Deacon agreed. "The irrepressible Amari and her pal, Richard. They came in with that Brotherhood contingent yesterday. I'm showing them the sights."

Harkness grimaced. "Ah, the Lyons crew. Can't say that I _don't_ want them around for our mutant problem - I'm new here and don't want to make waves. Still, it is a little grating to bear with their overweening superiority. No offense, folks," he added hastily.

"None taken. We're not actually _with_ the Brotherhood." Amari frowned, distracted. Something about his voice and the way he carried himself was familiar to her. "Have you ever been through Megaton, Mr. Harkness? As a guard with a caravan or something? I could have sworn we'd met before."

He looked puzzled for a moment. "No, miss, I'm afraid not. I came from… somewhere west of here… yes, I think it must have been west. You wouldn't have heard of it."

"No, I reckon not. Amari's lived in a vault for most of her life. She doesn't know where _anything_ is." Deacon nudged her urgently in the ribs and she took the hint.

"Never mind," she said with a smile. "It must have been someone else." Harkness still looked lost, staring out into space, and she let Deacon lead her away, throwing an apologetic look back at the dumbstruck officer. "It's nice to have met you!"

Deacon was in a bad mood as they left the ship. "Did you hear that? He ground to a halt over a straightforward question. And no wonder! He's got a precarious back story full of holes. Fuck Pinkerton and his shoddy memory chips. But there was no one else _here_. Normally, we program them at home, _then_ ship them out, but recent events have made that too hard. And A3 got out of the Commonwealth before we could approach him."

"I really think I had heard him before." Barely attending to Deacon's rant at all, Amari was still trying to remember, even as she trotted to keep up with his angry pace. "Somewhere. Had to be back in Megaton. I haven't been much anywhere else with strangers."

"You might have," Deacon grumbled, taking the steps two at a time. "We didn't flag him down until he'd passed Tenpenny Tower, still on a blind course going south. He was running scared. Said he'd neutralized one Courser on his tail already. Blasted him with a gun he'd ripped off of an old robobrain."

Amari's heart plunged into her stomach. "Oh," she said in a tiny voice.

Deacon wheeled around. "Oh?" he said suspiciously. "Something you want to say?"

"Yeah..." Amari checked Richard behind her for a reaction. He didn't seem interested in the conversation at all. "Tell me: hypothetically, what _would_ a mesmetron do to a synth? If it hit him in the head at really close range? Because it _might_ be that I'm starting to believe you."

* * *

Pinkerton's workshop was a chaotic mess compared to the labs she'd known in the vault. Pinkerton himself was a haughty, unlikable person who seemed positively gleeful to have a subject to work with. Deacon's synth theory was looking better every moment they lingered here, as many of his particulars were confirmed by Pinkerton's ready answers to her questions. After twenty minutes of discussion, Amari had made an executive decision on Richard's behalf: she would order him to accept sedation, to submit to an invasive procedure. After that, it was just a matter of letting Pinkerton work. After the scientist backed away from his newest patient Deacon beckoned her in close, handing her a thinly tapered scope. "In case you still had doubts, take a look at this."

She looked. There, through the tiny pinhole Pinkerton had opened up in Richard's skull, she could see the gleam of wires. "He really is a robot, then," she said dumbly. "All this time, I thought he was just another damaged person."

"He _is_ damaged," Pinkerton cut in crisply, pushing past her to thread a wine into the hole he'd made. "Whatever did this… what did you say it was, again?"

For the third time that day, Amari described the injury and the comatose state which had followed. In retrospect, she felt stupid. How could she have missed so much in examining him? Just how humanlike were these synths? In her own defense, she hadn't know that such things were in the realm of possibility.

Pinkerton nodded, impatiently waiting until she was through before launching into his technical explanation. "It acted on his synapses like a clumsy, untargeted virus, erasing, truncating, and scrambling data. After he shut down, his brain tried to repair itself, but was cut off from key paths by the Institute's failsafes. That he landed on a protective behavior pattern is part luck, part design. It was probably meant to make him easier for a real Institute operative to retrieve him from the field. He mistagged you as one of them."

"He's been protecting me because he felt he had to?" With this information coming on the heels of Deacon's revelation, Amari felt a now-familiar sense of loss and loneliness. Even though she had come to expect very little from Richard, he was still a person who had voluntarily come with her - or so she had thought. Now she had to admit that he wasn't close to being a friend. Never was. Never could have been.

"Yes, and he didn't know why. _And_ that impulse is degrading. It wouldn't have lasted forever. He was actively trying to examine it, even fight against it. I'll have to uncouple that today, or the dissonance might damage him further. It'll be interesting to see what he does without it." The old man rubbed his spidery hands together with an unpleasant, dry, rustling noise, and Amari decided that she hated him a little.

"Yes, very _interesting_." Sidelined for now, Deacon was a study in physical agitation. Pinkerton wouldn't let him smoke inside - something about it messing with the equipment - and so he'd resorted to pacing. "Hopefully the answer to that is not 'kill us all.'"

Amari had expected to lose Richard, sooner or later, and if what Pinkerton said was true, this was the time. As useful as he was to her, she didn't want responsibility for a mindless thrall. "What comes next for someone like him?" she asked, looking to both Deacon and Pinkerton. "Can you give him the emotional intelligence to make sense of his situation? To make choices on his own?"

Deacon stopped pacing to field this question. "If he had come to us voluntarily, if he had _consented_ , Pinkerton could have cleared the broken ends left by the failsafes and planted a backstory that he could live with. Something vague and difficult to fact-check. Something that could help him integrate with society." He paused. "We still _could_ do that. We would have to wake him up first. After giving him an autonomy transplant to actually make a decision of his own. I don't feel moral compunctions about doing that part now, but..." He trailed off, still staring at the man on the table.

Amari heard the hesitation in his voice. "You're afraid of him," she accused. "For all your fancy talk about synth rights, you're scared of a synth who needs your help."

"You bet I am." Deacon went back to his circuit around the edge of the room. "Have you seen him in action? If he decides to exercise his free will to our detriment, he could kill all three of us in a heartbeat. Hell, if Pinkerton throws in a emotional upgrade too, he could have a great time doing it."

"There _are_ the beginnings of new connections," Pinkerton murmured, studying the screen of a terminal that was wired into Richard's brain, unperturbed by this outburst. "He's spent… what, almost two months living among people? Being treated reasonably well by someone who believed emphatically in his humanity? He can't really _feel_ things - not yet - but he does define himself, at least partially, in relation to others. I haven't seen nearly enough case studies to be sure of anything, but that's probably a good sign."

Deacon wasn't convinced. "'Probably a good sign?' You think that's enough? Genuine question. You're gambling with a lot of people's lives, not to mention the secrecy of our entire operation in the Capital Wasteland."

"It _has_ to be," Pinkerton said firmly. "Until I turn the emotional registers on and give him the capacity for self-realization, he can't decide who he's going to be. He'll be stuck at square one for the rest of his life, probably as a pawn of worse people than your young friend here. That's a cruel and potentially dangerous option. The only other option is to kill him, and I don't _think_ you want to be party to that. It'd be a pity to waste such a magnificent specimen..."

"I don't know about John here, but _I_ won't allow that," Amari said firmly. "He trusted you - trusted _me_ \- enough to get on your table. You can't betray that trust. I won't let you."

"Actually, he did that because you told him to, because he was compelled by an errant program. But you're right. The Railroad is in the business of helping synths, not destroying them. He is a synth. Right, Mr. Doe?"

" _Yes_ ," Deacon admitted through gritted teeth.

"Very well, then. Mr. Deckard, welcome to humanity..." And he went to work on his terminal.

"I want to watch," Amari insisted. "To make sure you're doing what you say you're doing."

Pinkerton shrugged. "Suit yourself. Do you have the knowledge or experience to evaluate what I'm doing at _all_?"

"No. That's why you're going to explain it to me, step by step."

For the next few hours, Amari learned a lot about synths and synth programming. Pinkerton grumbled at first, but eventually warmed to her questions, taking pleasure in being the most knowledgeable person in the room. Her mind was still moving slowly and her headache was starting to come back, but she thought she could begin to understand what he was showing her. Synths might have been human on the outside, but on the inside they were all code. After long last, he closed the connection, removed the wire, and stimpaked the tiny hole in Richard's forehead.

"Alright. Cross your fingers, everybody. We'll sit back and wait while that last dose wears off. Girl, you be the one to approach him. _Slowly_ , in case he's disoriented. No one go for your weapon, whatever happens."

Amari dragged a chair over and sat down - not too close - watching the steady rise and fall of Richard's chest. Deacon sat on the floor, hunched over, eyes fixed on nothing. Pinkerton worked on cleaning his tools like he hadn't a care in the world.

It didn't take long for him to wake. She waited until he'd been sitting up for a minute before opening the conversation.

"Hi Richard. How's your head?"

He just looked at her, dark eyes clouded with confusion. She had seen his eyes so seldom that it was hard to read his expression.

She tried again, more slowly. "Do you remember what we talked about before you went to sleep?"

"I'm a machine. A soldier built to serve others." On the surface, his voice was a flat as ever, but there was _more_ beneath it now.

"You're artificial, yes, but you don't have to serve anybody anymore. You're free. Free from me, too. I didn't mean to have a hold over you, and that's gone now." When he didn't respond, she gestured to the doctor behind her. "Pinkerton has an offer for you. You should hear him out."

He listened in silence to the promise of a memory chip, saving his terse reaction for the end.

"So I wouldn't be myself anymore?"

"No, you'd be someone else. Some of who you are might carry over - muscle memory, skills, gut reactions to things, feelings, mannerisms, and so forth - but the personality part would benew. I'd have to wipe the last two months to avoid dissonance. Think about it. Most synths in your position end up choosing this option."

He stood up, checking himself over. "I've thought about it. No."

Pinkerton pressed him. "You would think of yourself as human. Wouldn't have to remember that you are, in fact, an android."

Richard took a step toward the man, frowning. "I said 'no.' And you already did something to me. What was it? I feel different."

To his credit, the scientist didn't back down. "I gave you the building blocks of personhood - tools that every person needs to build a life in community with others. Tools you had before, albeit to a limited extent, before you were shot. Only now they're not limited by the role you were designed to play."

Amari touched his arm, making him round on her. "Richard… or whatever you want to be called… I didn't really think we were going to find a solution here. Not like this. But because of this man, you can pass as human now. You can be independent. Do whatever you want. Go wherever you want to go." She swallowed. "If you want to leave with me and the Brotherhood tomorrow, you can. If you don't, that's okay too. It's entirely up to you."

He shook his head as if he was in pain. "I need to _think_. I need to leave. Now. I'm 'free' to do that, right?"

Amari said "Yes" at the same time that Deacon chimed in (" _I'm_ not going to stop you") and then Richard was gone, his quick but heavy tread tracing a path back down the passageway to the entrance of Pinkerton's home.

"Come back anytime, Mr. Doe," Pinkerton said cheerfully, breaking the spell of silence suspended in Richard's wake. "You bring me the _most_ interesting projects."

* * *

The next morning, Amari woke early to the alarm on her Pip-Boy. Richard had come and gone before she'd returned from the lab on the previous afternoon, and she hadn't seen him since. His gear - armor, weapon, and all - was still missing and his bed had not been slept in. There was no sign of him in the marketplace either. Only when she got outside, her own pack in hand, did she find a clue to his nocturnal activities.

Down on the shore below the scaffolding, a little knot of security guards and curious onlookers were gathered beside the river while one of them extended a long pole, trying to hook it onto something in the water.

Deacon was watching the whole thing from a vantage point on the bridge, and nodded jerkily to her when she joined him.

"Check it out. The first thing our new man did with his freedom was to go out and commit a double homicide. Really gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn't it?"

A pit formed in Amari's stomach that had nothing to do with skipping breakfast. "How do you know it was him?"

Deacon snorted humorlessly. "Educated guess. Who else would kill the Institute's only human agent in the Capital? Who else _could_ kill his personal guard? I had my eye on Harkness until he turned in at eleven last night. I really don't think it was him."

Amari didn't have anything to say. She knew Deacon was probably right. The new-and-improved Richard had identified a threat to his continued existence and taken care of it. It was a reasonable application of his new agency, albeit a brutal one. "Does this make things harder for you?" she asked.

Deacon sighed, drumming his fingers on the railing. "In the short-term, it makes things easier. The retrieval guy is dead. In the long-term… it's not good. It would have been far, far better for Zimmer to have returned empty-handed than for him to have turned up dead in Rivet City. I'm going to have to give one of our agents-in-place some marching orders, things to look out for. I can't stay to micromanage that."

A distant sound of metal _clunks_ made them both turn their heads upwards. Down from the deck, descending the stairs on the outside of boat, came Lyons' small column, ready to be on the march again. "I need to go," Amari said. "I'm sorry that I… and Richard… made things harder for you. Thank you for your help."

"It was my… well, not my pleasure, but it was my job," he said heavily. He pulled a folded, sealed paper from his pocket and handed it to her. "I don't want to talk to a bunch of walking tanks right now. Even the decent ones get on my nerves. Give this to Sarah, won't you? Tell her it's from Johnny D. We keep Elder Lyons minimally apprised of our operations here in return for his tolerance if one of ours gets exposed. _Don't_ mention Richard to them. Please."

He turned back to the view, watching as the guards retrieved the bodies at last. Amari noticed that Zimmer's head had been crushed and she looked away, feeling sick and slightly guilty. Without turning to her, Deacon said by way of dismissal, "Good luck with the Brotherhood. Be careful with them. My offer's still open, despite everything. One way or another, I suspect I'll be seeing you around."


	12. People Die Out Here

For the first time since she'd first set foot in the wastes, Amari set aside her double layer of protection for the morning's walk to the GNR station. The gloves and boots stayed. No sense in taking risks. But she left off the goggles and scarf for once, wanting to take in the city she'd always read about without that extra filter.

Reality wasn't as breathtaking as she'd imagined: sure, the Washington Memorial was at least still standing, but it looked nothing like the picture in her textbook. A distant glimpse of a seated Lincoln across the marshy Mall told her that his landmark was intact as well, but there was a complicating element to the sightseeing. Namely, the supermutants and their pets, which had entrenched themselves in the major thoroughfares, forcing their small group to stick to lesser by-ways. And sometimes, even this caution wasn't enough.

The mutant's guard dogs, called "centaurs," were not what Amari had expected from the name at all. Far from the majestic creatures of myth, these were horrid, bulbous chimeras, made so much the worse by the vaguely man-like faces nestled among the tentacles and splayed-out limbs. _Had_ they really been human once? She could believe it of the mutants, their masters, but she didn't even like to think of the process that would turn a person into a misshapen monster like one of these.

"FEV," said Colvin shortly when she asked, kneeling beside him to examine the body. "A damned virus. Unholy experiments. You don't want to know the details."

He was right. She didn't. But if they were suffering inside those bodies - and she hoped they weren't - their suffering was over when Lyon's Pride was done with them. And yet again, she was ashamed to admit that she hadn't helped at all: had frozen, rather, when the first of the creatures appeared.

After two hours on the road, winding through the broken buildings of the city - and just after their party's second scuff-up of the day - she got up the courage to approach the youngest of the entourage with a question. Since Richard was no longer around to watch her back, there was something she needed to figure out for herself. The urgency of the matter didn't make the request sound any less ridiculous when she said it out loud.

"Penny, how do I... do what you do?"

She seemed honestly confused. "Do what?"

"Shoot. Fight. Leap into action. You know." _Be the kind of person that runs toward a fight rather than away_ , she mentally supplied.

"We-elllll…" she began. "First, I'd recommend being born in the wastes. I had a gun of my own before I was ten. That was before my parents died, but by then I was comfortable with it, and a good shot too. It was just another tool. You, you look like you'd rather be holding anything else when you've got a weapon in your hands."

Amari winced. "Yeah, I guess I could stand to practice more." What experience she had under her belt was mostly from the Anchorage simulation, and so far it hadn't translated well into actual combat. Not that she'd really tried, or that she'd _needed_ to try lately. Walking in the middle of the Brotherhood phalanx, she felt as safe as she'd ever been out here.

But Penny wasn't done. "You're so nervous you make _me_ nervous. I'm afraid you're going to shoot your toe off or something. I would _not_ want to be downrange from your fire."

"Okay, I got it."

"...and I've seen you shoot. If you hit anything, it's by accident. You're terrified of your own weapon and it _shows_."

"We've established that I'm terrible, Penny. Tell me what I _should_ do."

"If going back to your vault's still not an option…" Correctly interpreting the look on Amari's face, Penny hurried on. "...then I recommend that you join the Brotherhood. No, don't look at me like that. Not as a soldier, silly - a scribe! One of those nice, dusty scribes that gets to spend their entire life trying to make old computers work. You'd never have to leave the Citadel. Talk about boring, but you - you _like_ boring."

"You think _I'm_ Brotherhood material?" Amari asked incredulously.

Penny nodded vigorously, looking slightly ridiculous in her helmet. "Sure! We recruit all kinds… and, not to put too fine a point on it, you're better than some of the people we pick up. You're clean, you already think like a civilized human being, and you know _all_ your letters and numbers. That puts your application at the top of the pile. I'm serious. Talk to Scribe Rothchild when we get to the Citadel. He'll be thrilled."

Amari didn't know if she could buy wholeheartedly into the Brotherhood ethos - Deacon's casual disdain was echoing in her ears as she considered this option - and she made a polite but noncommital noise. "Didn't _you_ have any doubts?" she asked Penny.

Amari could almost see her frown under the helmet's opaque mask. "I was a homeless kid living hand-to-mouth in a hellhole. I would have put my name to almost _anything_ just to get out. Luckily, the Brotherhood has the right idea about most things."

Jennings, never far from Penny's side, had been listening to this exchange with interest. "She's right, you know. My ma and pa struggled for years to keep up a farm against the raiders and mutants. It ended with them and half my siblings dead in the last attack. My older brother took over the place and I guess he's doing okay, but I've never regretted leaving. Especially since I get to help protect people like my family."

It was the longest speech that Amari had ever heard the soft-spoken initiate make and she could only nod. _They_ were happy. They'd found their place in a dangerous world. She couldn't fault either of them for wanting to be a part of something bigger. She just wasn't at all sure that _she_ did. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Alphonse Almodovar was heaping scorn on her head for her reticence, but she pushed his intrusion away with an effort. _It's my life_ , she told him. _My choice_.

Unaware of the voices clamoring for Amari's attention, Penny was still singing the her people's praises. "Besides," Penny concluded, head half-turning toward her fellow soldier, touching her glove to his with a slight question in her tone. "We... or _I_ , anyway, want a family someday. The Brotherhood offers safety that no other place in the world can." She swung back around to Amari. "No pressure. And, to partly answer your original question: if you're too scared to ask Dusk or Colvin, I can give you some one-on-one marksman training once we reach the Citadel. I'm not the best, but I'm sure as hell better than you."

From up ahead, Vargas wheeled on the trio of them, barking out an order that put an end to conversation for the time being. "Intiates! Civilian! Enough talk back there. The muties don't care if you're making friends. This is _not_ a walk in the park."

The three of them lapsed into silence and Amari tried to look small and unobtrusive. The Sentinel and her right-hand man had _not_ been happy to see her alone - _sans_ Richard - waiting in front of Rivet City this morning. Without Richard's prowess to balance out her utter lack of skill, she was a net liability, and everybody knew it. Luckily, no one had voiced an objection to continuing on with their previous plan, and Amari didn't intend to make them regret it.

She _wanted_ to improve - had been getting steadily better, in fact, back in Megaton, driven by Moira's sometimes unrealistic expectations. Her old employer had overestimated her abilities more than once, but in retrospect, Amari had to admit that it was those intense challenges that had forced her to grow the most. It pained her to think about how much she owed Moira - and how poorly she had repaid her in the end. Like a drowning swimmer, she'd taken every opportunity to save herself; this had been a natural thing to do, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd climbed to safety at Moira's expense. Not to mention Billy Creel's, whose murder had also come as retribution for helping Amari escape. Who else would pay the price for her survival?

 _Maybe I_ should _just be a scribe_ , she thought. Even with her obvious disdain for that role, Penny made that branch of her order sound appealing. _Can't really get anybody killed there. And it'd probably be… easier. Closer to my comfort zone. I wouldn't have to change as much to fit in there._

Poor, pathetic Amata wouldn't recognize Amari as she was now, but she was still miles behind people like Deacon and Penny, or almost everybody born and bred in the Wasteland for that matter. She didn't know if she would ever catch up. Didn't know if she really wanted to, either. The Citadel sounded like another, more bracing version of the vault, and she supposed she should leap at the chance to bury herself there. Before she would commit to that, however, she'd need more information, preferably from people that weren't starry-eyed idealists like Penny.

Amari considered her future in silence for the remainder of the morning, wondering idly if scribes had to carry a gun. As they drew near to their destination in the heart of the city, however, she returned to the present. Something was wrong. Even Amari could tell that the sounds of sustained weapons fire were bad news when they were still a quarter mile away. Even if she hadn't, the way the others became more alert and tightened their ranks would have been a good clue. They broke into a run, and she did her best to bring up the rear, afraid of what lay ahead, but not wanting to be left behind.

At their first sight of a pack of mutants in the open square, facing off against a ring of people in power armor, Lyons immediately began calling orders to her squad, directing them to take their positions to join and support the others. Vargas slapped Penny on the left pauldron, beckoning her to follow him. Looking behind him, he shouted back at Amari, " _You_. Civilian. Stay out of this."

Amari didn't need to be told twice. It was one thing to want to be prepared to survive in the wasteland, and quite another to pretend like she belonged in the middle of a Brotherhood operation. She ran in the opposite direction, aiming for the remains of a precariously-tall office building at the far end of the square. She would watch Lyons' crew at work and try to learn from them, but only from the safety and vantage point of the old ruin. She wasn't particularly worried about them. There _were_ a lot of mutants - she counted eight of them at a glance - but she'd seen the team in action now. They'd be fine.

The walls of her chosen shelter were full of cracks and holes, but the stairs were relatively intact. Amari took a perch just inside a glassless window on the second floor - as high as she dared to go in the old edifice and a safe distance back from the action - and watched, studying their movements, and still trying to catch her breath. It occurred to her then that what worked for Brotherhood soldiers would never work for her - or not unless someone offered her a mobile tank to wear. How much damage they could take, however, she didn't know. She winced at the sound of minigun fire rattling over someone's - Kodiak's? - armor, and was relieved when he kept moving, pressing closer to the enemies that were using the pillars of the building itself for cover.

She'd never had the perspective to study mutants without the blurred perception of terror, and was interested to note that they were organized, strategic creatures. Not only could they effectively wield the weapons they'd acquired somehow, but they knew how to deploy their numbers intelligently. Where had they come from? What did they _want_? That was another good question for Colvin to refuse to answer, but maybe someone else - a logical and dispassionate scribe, perhaps - would know.

Even from a distance, the sound was overwhelming. She didn't know how anybody could stand being in the middle of that without panicking. Both the attackers and the defenders were using heavy weapons now - lots of grenades, and (she was pretty sure) there was a missile launcher in the mix somewhere, though she couldn't tell which side was carrying it. When a bus flipped over suddenly on a side-street partly obscured from view, Amari assumed that the explosives had something to do with it. Nothing had prepared her for the monstrosity responsible.

When it came onto the scene, her vantage point no longer felt completely safe. It was _unreal_. No living thing could be that big. A creature built along human lines would be crushed, suffocated under its own weight. This thing, though, _was_ humanoid - barely. Stooped and lumpy, it wore no clothes, no real armor, but only scrap tied to its back and chest. Its weapon was a crude club fashioned from a _light pole_ , cement and asphalt still clinging to its base.

Without knowing what she was doing, Amari stood, moving forward to lean out as far as she dared. It was on her mind to shout a warning to the others - as if they could hear her, as if they wouldn't notice the newcomer immediately. In a moment, she could hear them, though.

"Behemoth! Retreat!"

" _Back_! To cover!"

Vargas's yell rose above them all. "No dead heroes, Reddin!"

The creature - the Behemoth - wasn't in the least slowed by its incredible bulk; its long legs bypassed obstacles with ease, and what it couldn't step over, it battered out of the way.. It didn't seem to care that most of its smaller brethren were already dead. It didn't even react when a misaimed missile passed just over its head.

One of the Brotherhood soldiers - Amari had long since lost track of whether it was one of the original defenders or one of Lyons' crew - had been too slow to get out of the way, and found his or her way blocked by a tangle of smashed vehicles. The creature - the behemoth? - swung its crude weapon at the human scuttling by its feet. It missed, but before Amari could breathe a sigh of relief, it reversed the attack with surprising speed and brought it back the other way. The club smashed into the metal-encased torso, sending the broken body flying in a brutal arc that ended at the wall of the GNR building.

"No!"

Amari's cry, heard by no one, was echoed by the others in a shout of rage that carried over the space. They retaliated with concentrated fire, a barrage that only seemed to drive the creature into a frenzy. Turning and bellowing, it fixed upon a lone figure in power armor that had been firing long, red lasers into its well-protected back.

 _Run_ , she urged them. _Get out of there_. She gripped the concrete window frame with one hand, her hated, heavy pistol with the other. For a moment, it seemed as if there was about to be another pointless death, but then their foolish, brave stand broke and they ran. Zig-zagging in front of the monster's charge, leaping over rubble, bypassing larger obstacles, they had a specific destination in their flight, Amari realized with apprehension. The very building _she_ had taken cover in.

The creature was visibly hurt now, with patches of its scabrous hide flaking away in black patches where the powerful weapons had scorched it, but it showed no signs of laying down to die. It grew larger and larger with its deceptively lumbering movement, filling the entire frame of the window where she stood. Here was a target she couldn't miss, if only she could bring herself to shoot. And shoot, she did, though not with a steady hand or any particular attention to hitting vital spots; most of the eight bullets presumably struck it _somewhere_ , but did nothing at all to slow it down. The attack _did_ cause it notice her, though.

Somewhere below, out of sight, the fleeing soldier had disappeared into the building. They resumed firing from the floor below - Amari could see the streaks of red light hitting the target low - but now it was more interested in the harmless annoyance at eye level, twenty-five feet above the ground. She jumped back, just in time to avoid the questing hand it thrust through the window, blindly grabbing for her; it came so close that she could have reached out to touch it. Amari could see the knotted veins under its yellowish skin and the stubby bristle of black hair on its knuckles, and shot at it again, forgetting that the gun was empty. Frustrated, it withdrew its hand, leaving her to retreat to the top of the stairs shaking in relief but wondering what she should do next.

 _It can't reach me_ , Amari reminded herself. _I'm safe in here. The guys out there will burn it to a crisp and-_

WHAM! Walls shook, dust trickled to the ground, and somewhere high up above, something creaked ominously.

 _It can't actually knock this place down. It's not_ that _big._ Even as she was thinking this, another shattering blow dislodged a ceiling beam, bringing it crashing down on the piece of floor she had just crossed. Vividly remembering her narrow escape from another crumbling building - and her last direct conflict with supermutants - Amari broke for the ground floor. Perhaps she could escape out the back while it tried to batter down the front.

Reflecting on this moment in the ample leisure time she had in the hours and days that followed, Amari would remember leaping from the first step to the third - clutching the railing for support when another almighty _bang_ struck the exterior walls. She wouldn't remember jumping or falling down the last few steps, only the sting in her palms from where she caught herself on the ground, pack hanging off one shoulder, canteen twisted awkwardly to her front. By great good fortune, she held on to both.

From the dirt-packed ground floor, Amari had a muddled impression of great clouds of dust, of lasers cutting through the haze, and a great cacophony of noises from outside - roars from the monster and weapons fire from those attacking it. Forgetting her plan of leaving the building, Amari ran toward the only hiding spot the bare space admitted - the artificial cave under the stairs. It was solid and protected on three sides. She'd curl up there and wait for someone to shout the all clear. She hadn't quite reached it when an ominous whistling sound preceded a shattering explosion which brought the whole world down in a shattering crash.

"Respawn. Respawn. _Respawn_ , damn it!" The prospect of her own impending death was a reality her mind couldn't take. She'd endured a hundred simulated demises in the game, but couldn't cope with the threat of the real thing. Reflexes threw her down and forward, arms protecting her head, but her mind was already expecting the cool numbness of the simulator's release. She'd put in hours of training in that safe sandbox - many times more than actual field experience. For that reason, for the first few minutes after the walls thundered down around her, she was relatively calm. Only after the darkness stretched on too long, when the dust got into her nose and made her sneeze, did she consciously acknowledge her predicament. _Then_ came real, desperate terror.

Amari couldn't see her hand in front of her face. _I've gone blind!_ No, her eyes were closed, sealed shut by the grit that covered her from head to toe. Even open, though, there was nothing, not even the tiniest glimmer of light. She tried to suck in a lungful of air, but only succeeded in making herself choke on air that was mostly stirred-up sediment. Panic made her stupid, her flailing movements bruising her hands as she encountered boundaries too close to be tolerable. She was in a tiny prison of concrete and jagged rebar and that was _not_ okay. Losing her head entirely, she tried to sit up too quickly, earning a flash of stars in the darkness and an irritating warm trickle running down her temple into her hair. Stunned, she fell back, staring sightlessly at nothing, heart threatening to burst.

Pain woke her up a little, at least. So, she couldn't move. That was bad and there was no obvious solution. She couldn't really breathe. That was _very_ bad. Wishing she hadn't chosen _this_ day to drop the scarf, she fumbled for her bag. She was still wearing it, thankfully, but it was pinned beneath her and partly buried. She dragged it out and fumbled for the clasp. It _should_ be right on top. In a hurry to pack and find Deacon - not to mention look for Richard - she'd merely stuffed it in there this morning. _There_ it was. Soft, scratchy fabric - exactly what she needed. Wrapped around her mouth and nose, it would filter out the worst of the dust. She hoped. If only she could _see_. A slow, maddening _click_ from her wrist - a familiar sound that she couldn't quite place at the moment - was the only thing she could hear.

"Oh. I'm a idiot," she muttered, the first sound she'd spoken aloud since the cataclysm. Her own voice was strange to her, rough and almost inaudible. Turning on the Pip-Boy light - the first and most obvious thing she _should_ have done - gave her a picture of her prison. If anything, it made it look worse that it had seemed before. The stairs above had held - or she wouldn't have survived - everything else had given way from the looks of it. Her legs were partly buried and going numb; they stung when she pulled them free of their prison, but everything seemed to be in one piece. It took a few minutes to be sure of this, because somehow there was blood _everywhere_ from the cut on her forehead, smeared around by her fumbling hands. _Lucky_ , she thought. _Or not. Now I can die slowly instead of instantaneously. Like that poor soldier._

As if she'd spoken aloud, someone answered her from somewhere outside of her light-filled cavity.

"Who's there? What's that light?"

Even through the filth clogging her ears - and despite the muffled, distorted sound of the sound coming through the chinks in the rubble - she recognized that voice.

"Penny? That was _you_ down there? You're _alive_?" Relief made her giddy. It also made her feel lazy. Someone else - someone more capable - was here to tell her what to do. She wouldn't have to do this alone.

There was a groan and the sound of metal on stone. "Alive, but stuck. I can't even roll over. Can't begin to move whatever this thing on my chest is by myself. How the hell did _you_ survive that?"

"Luck." Amari tried to work a gloved fingertip into her ears to clean them out. It sort of worked, though they still felt like they were packed with sand. "I figured out pretty fast I didn't want to be on the second floor when he started hammering away. I really didn't think it was going to knock this place down, though..."

"It didn't," Penny said glumly. "Didn't you hear that sound right before the big boom? _Someone_ used a Fat Man. I'm going to go with one of the GNR guys. Glade wouldn't have missed a target like that. At least the collapse probably crushed the monstrosity in the process."

It took a minute for Amari to take this statement in; her thoughts were running slow and stupid as the adrenaline ebbed away. "Fat Man?" A cartoonish image of paunchy Officer Gomez sprang unbidden to mind and she laughed. It made her head hurt. She hastened to apologize for the joke, "He was one of the nice ones, though."

"What? It's a mini-nuke launcher. That's why your Geiger counter's making that noise. Do you have rad-x?"

"Uh-huh." It was in the bag she still held clutched to her chest - somewhere. She didn't want to go looking for it just now. With the adrenaline gone, she was cold and very, very tired. With her body trapped and hurting, it felt better to imagine herself separate from it, like a pair of disembodied eyes floating in the dim light. "What about it?"

"Take some," Penny ordered. "Every ten to twelve hours, as long as we're here. Radiation sickness is bad."

It took a long time of fumbling around to pull the tiny bottle out, and longer still to open the lid that proudly proclaimed itself to be "child proof." She dry-swallowed one and dropped the bottle back into the kit, before belatedly remembering something.

"Y'wan'one?"

"Thanks... but no thanks. My suit's pretty good protection, and besides, there's no way for you to hand it to me, and no way for me to take it. You doing okay? You sound funny."

"Fine. Tired." The harsh green light made her eyes hurt. She switched it off and settled her head back. This wasn't too bad, she decided. She was underground again, where she belonged. Tons of concrete over her head.

"Don't go to sleep yet. We need to talk about what we're going to _do_."

"Do?" Amari couldn't imagine what Penny expected her to do. "I'm trapped, just like you."

A long sigh, then a patient explanation. "My people will be coming for me. For us. They'll try to dig us out. We need to signal to them that we're still alive and give them an idea of our position. We can take turns tapping on rocks and rebar. Before you completely zone out, do us a favor and turn on your radio. They might be able to hear it. Should get a good signal, right here on Three Dog's doorstep."

This was a good idea. Again, Amari kicked herself for not thinking of it. Again, she envied Penny's competency. She punched the dial with a clumsy finger and got John Henry Eden ranting about "power-armored boy scouts" and she laughed again. It was funny because the Enclave wasn't real, and besides, some of the Brotherhood were _girls_. Girl scouts. Ha.

Somewhere in the dark, the initiate groaned. "God, not that one. Try again. And stop _laughing_. You're freaking me out."

She turned the dial one notch to the right and let her hand fall away carelessly. A clanging sound began as Penny set to work on the job she had set for herself; this mingled oddly with the music that filled all the available space and spread out into the shadowy corners, but nothing could disrupt the cool serenity that had settled over her mind.

 _Into each_ [bang!] _life some rain must fall._ [bang!] _But too much is falling_ [bang! bang!] _in mine..._

* * *

Tumbling out of a troubling dream, Amari awoke to confusion, cold, and pain. Her head throbbed, both where she'd hit it and behind her dry, gritty eyes. Her mouth was filled with sand despite the cloth and her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. She flipped the light on again. _Water_. _I need water._ For a frightening moment, she didn't see it - it had slipped aside when she'd searched her pack for medical supplies. But no, there it was. Her elbow had been resting on it all night - or for however long she'd been asleep. According to her Pip-Boy, it was nearly midnight on the same day. She'd missed lunch and dinner, but she wasn't a bit hungry. Only thirsty.

"Oh good. I wasn't sure you were still alive. It's been really lonely over here." For a second, Amari couldn't remember who was talking to her. Penny sounded like a dull, lifeless version of herself.

"Sorry. I feel better now." She really did - her mind was clear and focused, especially once she'd drunk her fill of water. Too late, she realized that she ought to think of saving it.

"Take over on the tapping, okay? I need a break."

Amari remembered a detail from her dream, then. The soldier, the one who _hadn't_ run: in her dream, it hadn't been a stranger, but one of the team she'd gotten to know.

"Who was it that got hit by the behemoth, Penny?"

She got a chilly moment of silence and then a mildly hostile response. "You can't even tell us apart?"

" _No_ , I can't. Not in armor. Not at that distance. Give me a break."

"Oscar. I heard Vargas telling him to move - and he _did_ \- but he ran the wrong way."

Amari's heart sank. "I'm so sorry, Penny."

"He _might_ have survived," came the obstinate reply. "I've seen people go through worse and come out without a scratch. I just had half a building fall on me, and I'm _fine_. He'll be okay. You'll see."

Amari didn't think a human being could have endured that kind of impact, no matter what they were wearing, but didn't argue the point. "You could be right. I hope so."

"Damn right I'm right. We'll be talking about this one for the rest of our lives, Oscar and me."

Something prickly with far too many legs dropped onto Amari's head and she clamped down on the urge to scream. She flicked the beetle away and steered the conversation to safer waters. The important thing now was that they both remain calm and focused on survival. "So… really big supermutants… is that a _normal_ run-in for you guys?" She was amazed at how normal her voice sounded.

"A behemoth?" Penny's voice was glum. "No, I'd only ever heard of them before. The strategy we trained for those was to confuse it, to wear it down. But it closed so quickly… there wasn't time… or room… _Gah!_ I ran. Just like you. No better'n a green recruit. Your scaredy-cat ways are rubbing off on me."

Unperturbed, Amari resorted to practicalities. "Standing your ground would have got you killed."

"I know. Still, _some_ people are properly ashamed of cowardice. I left the others to deal with it - it's just good luck that it followed me and gave them a chance to wear it down. D'you think Sarah Lyons would have run like that?"

It was Amari's opinion that the tough-as-nails Sentinel didn't see bravery as an excuse for suicide, and she said as much, and got a heavy sigh for an answer.

"You asked earlier about the difference between you and me is, and there's your answer. Survival - _your_ survival - is your highest criteria. _I_ care about my brothers and sisters more than that. You don't risk anything for anybody if you don't have to. It's all a probability game for you. You don't care about anybody but yourself."

This stung, especially because part of her thought it could be true. _That's not fair_. _I care_. As if to prove it, she changed the subject again. "Do you have water, Penny?"

"Yeah. This suit has a pretty good reservoir to sip from. It's not going to smell good in here pretty soon, but that's a secondary problem. What about you?"

"I started the day with a half-gallon." She'd drunk some of it on the walk across the city as well. Richard had taken his much larger canteen with him, but she couldn't fault him for that. It wasn't like she could carry much more than she already was.

"Better than nothing, I guess. Good night, then." That was the last thing Penny said for a long time, and by the time the sun was rising - somewhere - Amari wanted to scream to wake her up again. Every hour that went by felt like four, the minutes ticking by with agonizing slowness on the Pip-Boy's screen. Sick of the the same old songs and Three Dog's annoying prattle, she turned off the radio, and set to the job of tapping with all of the enthusiasm she could muster. She tried to believe that help was coming. The more time that went by, the less likely it seemed, but optimism was better than hopeless despair.

* * *

Amari and Penny went on in this way for an untenable amount of time, the connection between them growing more disconnected as their nerves frayed under the stress. They fought about whose turn it was to signal to their hypothetical rescuers. They fought about whether or not the radio was doing any good. Penny grew irrationally furious that Amari had food and _she_ did not, and pointing that it was mostly unpalatable dry goods did no good. They were both hungry, filthy, and afraid; neither of them was a frame of mind to put up with even the slightest bit of friction. Without a friend - or an adversary - in the dark, however, Amari thought she would have gone crazy. If only she could have _seen_ the only other human being left in her shrunken world.

A full day went by, and then another. Her thoughts became increasingly disconnected, and what little she tried to say to Penny after the forty-eight hour mark came out strange. All she wanted to say is that they would be _okay_ , that wasn't it nice they weren't alone down here, but her voice was the fractious croak of a senile stranger.

The longer she was submerged in it, the more Amari believed that the darkness pressing in on her, seeping into her eyes, ears, and mouth, was _alive_ \- more alive, even, than the woman lying a few feet away. Thirst, pain, and discomfort threatened to drive her mad, but the darkness was a constant companion, a friend that would stay with her to the end.

It had been at least fifty hours since the collapse, according to the timekeeper on her Pip-Boy. It could have been sixty now for all she knew. Penny had begged her to shut it off, claiming that the feeble green light was worse than the darkness; in any case, it was showing a low battery warning, so Amari agreed without a fuss, wanting to save it for the radio - the radio that _must_ keep going when it became impossible to keep on tapping. Without light or any sense of the passage of time, it was easy to lose herself. Amari kept her eyes open because she couldn't bear to keep them shut, and she found herself seeing things that she knew couldn't be there. Her mind was trying to make sense of the darkness and her vision bloomed with vivid hallucinations. She saw small, irrelevant, brightly-colored things, snakes and insects, and sometimes faces of people she knew. They were mostly comforting faces, saying vague but pleasant things, and she appreciated the company, even though she knew they weren't real.

At some point, her throat hurt too much for talking, but she kept up with the tapping, resuming it for ten or fifteen minutes every waking hour - or what felt like an hour - just as Penny had told her they must at the beginning. Lyons _would_ be mustering a rescue effort, and Amari knew they needed a beacon to follow. Overcome by despair, Penny had outright refused to work any longer, and even complained about the noise when Amari persisted. After a while, the complaining stopped, as did the sporadic crying and every other form of expression. Amari worried about her friend, but couldn't do anything to help. All she could do was focus on tapping.

The range of motion for her arm was only about ten degrees. Amari didn't dare let go of her favorite rock in the dark, knowing she'd never find it again, and as a result her fingers had cramped into claws around the rough fragment. Every new tap on the pipe sent an electric trickle of pain through the bones and up the nerves into her pinned shoulder.

 _Tap. Tap. Tap_. She couldn't hear the tinny clank of stone on metal anymore. All she could hear was a repeating distress signal that echoed through her sensory-deprived brain: _Save us. Down here. Save us. Down here._

 _Tap_. _Tap. Tap._ It was a job, her only job, but it was driving her crazy. And it felt so useless. She was cold, even wrapped in her blanket. Tired and sluggish, despite all of the sleep. After water - rain? - started trickling down through the rubble on the second day, she was also wet, though she tried to lick what she could reach for the moisture. When she finally gave in, her final conscious act was to turn the volume up as high as it would go. That would have to be enough. She couldn't do any more.

Amari clutched the precious rock to her chest with her battered hands and tried to curl up on her side for warmth. She only succeeded is dislodging a new fall of dust on her head and provoking a coughing fit that left her dizzy and panting. Despite the chill and shortness of breath, she slipped easily into slumber, falling into dreams of food and friends and light. The man on the radio was there with her, loud and obnoxious above the party's conversations.

" _Three Dog here… Brotherhood friends… if you're listening under there, hang on!_ "

When she awoke, it was to the worst headache she could remember. The dust seemed thicker than before, and she coughed, sending knives into her sore throat and lungs. Dirt coated her tongue, which felt like a strip of jerky. _I'm dehydrated_ , Amari decided, and she fumbled for the water bottle still slung across her chest, only to discover that it was empty. _When did I finish that?_ she wondered, straining to remember in her confusion. Perhaps it had spilled. At least the darkness didn't seem as complete as before. And she could hear _something_ under the strains of "Uranium Fever": a distant murmur of scraping and muttering.

"Penny," she whispered. She tried again, a little louder. "Penny!" There was no answer, not even a groan, a whisper, or a sob. "Hang on, Penny. I think I hear them now."

Hours or minutes later, there was a change in the monotony. It was daytime when the breach appeared - or at least Amari thought it was. White lights stabbed through her brain, voices jumbled meaninglessly in her head. Heavy hands reached for her, pulled her out, tried fruitlessly to pry the rock from her hand. They lifted her, her arms and legs still locked in position, and began to carry her away.

"I can walk," she tried to tell them, but nothing came out. "Don't forget Penny."

* * *

When Amari woke, her limbs were straight, but incredibly sore, and her hands were empty and bandaged. She felt congested and feverish and the pain in her head had gotten no better. A arm wrapped around her shoulders and pulled her protesting body into a half-sitting position. "Drink this," she heard a voice say. The water was good, but it choked her, made her cough. She wanted more, but the hand took it away.

"Colvin says to take it slow. Now that you're more awake, this will be a lot easier." Penny looked awful, hollow-eyed and ill; somehow, she sounded more impersonal than she had from inside her suit.

"How long?" Amari wheezed.

"Less than a day. He said dehydration and respir.. respira... uh… breathing stuff would be your biggest concern. You don't have the best lungs, apparently. He'll be back in a few hours to check on you. I told him I'd take a turn."

"Are _you_ okay?"

"Better than you," she answered shortly. Amari heard her walk away. Heard the sound of water pouring in the background. The footsteps came back. "If you're not fit for travel in two days, we're going to leave you here. Someone else will come back for you. The new word from the top is that the guy you're trying to find is an old ally of ours. Elder Lyons really wants to talk to him, and he'll give you whatever help he can spare."

 _Oh great_. _More entanglement._ "I'll be ready." She hoped that was true. "Penny… what about Oscar?"

"We buried him last night. I knew it, even when we were… under there… but I didn't want to admit it." Her tone became stiff and formal, with an undercurrent of guilt. "I'm sorry I fell apart so quickly down there. I should have held myself together. I was the obvious choice to lead by example and I failed."

"You helped me too. A lot. Penny, I'm so sorry." Amari felt guilty, but couldn't pin down exactly why. Was it because she watched him die, unable to help? Had her presence altered the timing of their arrival or the dynamic of the team enough that the scale had tipped against Initiate Jennings? Really, though, she thought it was just a last gasp of lingering survivor's guilt. People died out here. That was just a fact of life. "He was a good man."

"You didn't really know him. But yeah. He was." With that, she left her alone.

* * *

It was three days before she could walk again, and sure enough, the others had already gone by the time she was up and about. The Brotherhood soldiers who remained were polite but distant, and mostly allowed her her own space for recovery. On the third day, she climbed the stairs to meet her host for the first time. He'd been expecting her, apparently.

"Hey there, sister. Glad you made it. It's high time we have a chat, you and me. Have a seat."

The speaker was a black man in his late twenties or early thirties, dressed in a grungy assortment of pre-War clothes that somehow managed to look cool on him. Amari could take or leave the soul-patch and goatee combination he had going on, but - in a previous, more care-free life - she would have found him moderately attractive. Not today, though. Not after the hellish week she'd had. Especially not given who he was and the distress he'd caused her, however inadvertently.

The face might be new, but she'd know that voice anywhere. Next to "President" Eden's, it was the most recognizable accent in the Capital Wasteland. "Hello, Mr… er, Dog."

He laughed and tipped her a wink. "Just Three Dog. Mr. Dog was my father's name. And you must be Marilyn. Or Amari, as you're going by now. I've been wanting to meet you for a couple of weeks. Ever since I heard about your liberating hand in Megaton."

 _That's a funny way to describe what I did. It was more Richard's maiming hands that did it._ "Marilyn's dead," she said quietly, ignoring the flattery. "And I don't want or _deserve_ to be your 'Lone Wanderer.' I'd like you to leave me alone. Hang your hopes on the weakest of the Brotherhood soldiers, and you'll still have someone better than me."

"I love the folks in power armor, but they're not really 'of the _people_.' _You_ are. Your dad and you are the best I've seen for a while, and I can't pass up the chance to spin a story around the pair of you. You're the symbol I've been waiting for."

"I wasn't being metaphorical," she corrected flatly. "Marilyn, James Wilder's only child, is _dead_. They fed her body into the incinerator last August. I'm her second-rate friend who just happened to make it out of the vault."

If she'd surprised him, he didn't show it. The grin on his face didn't even slip a notch. "That doesn't match my intel, kiddo. Care to tell me where my wires got crossed?"

"I lived a lie for a while. I let on that I was following my dad. It was one part deception, one part mental breakdown, and one part accident. The truth is that I was running away from my real father and his men. He hurt me to get to Marilyn and I had no idea what he was going to do next." A lump came into her throat as she explained this, yet again, to someone who couldn't possibly understand what it had been like to grow up in the vault. Or to leave it under such traumatic circumstances.

Three Dog dropped into a cushy airchair, sending a little cloud of dust into the air as he did so. He opened his mouth, but closed it again, struck speechless for once. He seemed to be meditating on his answer. Finally, he said, "That's not so good, 101. That's not the origin story I've been plugging at _all_."

"No, it's not," she agreed. "So you'll accept that I'm no hero and you'll leave me out of it?"

"Not so fast. As long as you're fighting the Good Fight - however reluctantly - you're one of mine. That doesn't change, no matter what your name is. I'm not letting you off the hook."

She almost screamed with frustration and wished she had the strength and audacity to grab him by the collar and shake that grin away. "I just want to keep my head down and _live_! Everything I do, I do to _survive_. I'm going to be selfish, safe, and happy, do you understand? _Pick_. _Someone_. _Else._ Ask for a volunteer!"

"Nope! Volunteers are in short supply. I pick you. Prove me wrong, if you like, but I'm not budging. I'm a big believer in self-fulfilling prophecies. If I wasn't, I think I'd be crazy by now."

She glared at him. "What do I have to do to change your mind? Massacre my way through Arefu? Blow up Megaton? Poison the water supply in Rivet City? Spend the next thirty years of my life organizing the card catalog in a Brotherhood archive?"

He crossed his arms and leaned back, regarding her complacently. "You ain't gonna do those things."

His confidence rankled her. Making an effort to reply calmly, she said, "No. What I am going to do is to fade out of the Capital Wasteland, starting… well, starting just as soon as I can. Keep on telling your work of fiction if you want - I can't stop you - but don't be surprised when the 'kid from 101' is a dud. A waste of your precious airtime."

"Whatever you say."

"You've painted a target on my back, made my eventual conversation with James that much worse, and people will have _expectations_ for me. Unrealistic expectations. I'm not the right material for the kind of character you want."

He flapped a dismissive hand in her direction. "Oh, boo-hoo. People might look for the best from you. What a calamity. It's not _my_ fault you started your topside career by telling lies."

She covered her face with her hands. She had long suspected Three Dog was cracked; she hadn't known he was a _fanatic_.

"If I _die_ because of something you say over the radio, will you feel bad? Say a nice eulogy for me over the airwaves?"

His reply chilled her, cutting off everything else she had wanted to say.

"Already got it written."


	13. Crossroads

"All that stuff you went through... it's still gotcha jumpy, doesn't it?" The door guard on the morning shift, a talkative, middle-aged man who'd introduced himself as Abbot, was sympathetic toward Amari's current difficulty with the outside world. "I don't blame you. We've lost whole squads to beasts like that. It hurts to lose a man, but it could have been much, much worse. Least you and Reddin were okay in the end."

Amari nodded, keeping her back pressed to the rough wall as if she needed its support to stay upright. Without _something_ firm to lean on, she felt vulnerable. Exposed. She hadn't dared to leave the radio station in the days since her recovery, except to avoid Three Dog on his occasional descents to the ground floor, where he liked to skim off fresh news from incoming patrols. He was in there right now, talking up his "Good Fight" with the latest batch of cold, tired soldiers. She shivered despite her multiple layers of clothing, and it had almost nothing to do with the icy temperatures. Her own lies combined with Three Dog's propaganda were a trap she couldn't escape from; one way or another, she'd have to go through the motions of being what he wanted, for as least as long as she needed the Brotherhood's help.

The courtyard still bore the scars from the behemoth's rampage. The bit of wall she now did her best to hold up was only a little ways down from where the late Initiate Jennings had fatally impacted the concrete. Twisted metal, blackened streaks, and the remains of the building at the opposite end of the plaza spoke to that day's desperation and the miserable ordeal which had followed. Even as the sight evoked terrible memories, Abbot's steady, kind voice derailed the train of thought which threatened to paralyze her.

"You'll like the Citadel, hon. It's as safe as anything. If they're sending who I think they are to pick you up… well, you'll be just fine."

The thought of travel of any distance made her mouth go dry and her throat close up like she was still slowly suffocating under rubble. "How far is it?" she croaked.

"Half-day's journey," Abbot said promptly. "A hop, skip, and a jump over the bridge and down the west bank. Muties and raiders like to shoot at each other from across the water, but neither one usually picks an all-out fight with the likes of us in the open, 'specially not close to the Citadel." He touched her shoulder lightly with a gauntleted hand, then indicated a small knot of people in power armor approaching the station in column formation. "Speak of the devil. Here comes your guide. Look sharp now. Cross is a first impressions kind of a gal."

Amari straightened up guiltily, as if caught in some worse crime than fear, and waited for the newcomers, all nerves at the alert. Though she bid them stay still, her traitorous hands rose unbidden to fiddle with the loose ends of her clothing, putting her anxiety on full display in the effort of hiding it. Her agitation only grew more pronounced when their leader - Cross? - stopped in front of her for a long moment, studying her from behind an impersonal helmet.

" _You're_ Amari?" the helmet snapped at last. "The one I'm here to collect?"

"Yes?" Somehow, she made her answer sound like a question, as if she wasn't sure either. She tried again, more assertively. "Yes, I am."

"I am Star Paladin Cross. We need to speak. In _private_ , unless you want to me to speak my piece out here. Come with me."

There seemed to be no recourse but obedience. Amari followed the figure inside, where the mechanized suit cracked opened to reveal a tall, muscular woman. She strode by Three Dog without a glance, leading the way to a tiny, vacant room - little more than storage closet, really.

Even out of armor, the amazon in front of her was the most physically-impressive woman Amari had ever seen, particularly in the cramped space. She would have towered over most of the Brotherhood _men_ she had met, and could easily have broken Amari over one knee. There was something in the face that reminded her of Richard - a missing element of imperfection or weakness - but there was also a quality of warmth and passion that she had never associated with her one-time companion. Cross let the silence stretch out between them as she looked down her nose at Amari. For her part, Amari tried to meet that stern, searching gaze, but her eyes dropped to her feet after a moment, ashamed without knowing why. It was as if she'd been judged and found wanting.

After finishing her examination, Cross spoke. "The Sentinel said you were green and I can see that. She didn't say you were a _liar_. I choose my companions and I don't generally travel with liars." Even on that fierce, wooden face, Amari could see sorrow and suspicion writ large. "Don't try to deny it, child. I knew at a glance that you were not and never had been Marilyn Wilder."

"I didn't _mean_ to lie," Amari mumbled miserably. How long would her mistake follow her? "How did you know?" she asked dully.

"I knew her and James, almost twenty years ago," Cross answered simply. "Her mother as well. Marilyn was little more than an infant, but bone structure doesn't change _that_ much." Her jaw set, she crossed scarred, sinewy arms in front of her. "Present your defense, then. I'll make my judgment when you're done. _I'll know if you lie_."

Without further excuses or dissembling or much emotion at all, Amari told her story for what felt like the dozenth time. It felt distant on this retelling, like a tragedy that had happened to someone else a long time ago. She found that she had lost most of the grief in repetition, and most of the guilt; the pain was still there, but it was fading. When she was done, she peered up at Cross, hoping she hadn't sounded cold. She wasn't. Just tired.

"You were her friend?" Cross asked quietly.

"I was."

"You avenged her death?"

Amari shivered. She could still feel the gun in her hand, smell the blood and the gunpowder. "Yes."

"Then I'll help you find James."

Amari hadn't expected that, had thought the woman was about to show her to the door and leave her out in the cold. "I thought Lyons said-"

Cross waved a dismissive hand. "We'll run the Elder's errand first - it's an important one - but Vault 112 doesn't take us too far out of the way on the return trip. If he's there, or if he's been there, we'll find out." Under her breath, she added fiercely, "He deserves to know the truth."

* * *

The trip was harrowing, much of it taking them over exposed stretches, but Amari didn't dare freeze up or lose her head under her watchful guardian's frown. One foot in front of the other, fading into the shadows whenever the shadow of a mutant fell across the path.

Cross sniffed at this the first time, grumbling at her once the danger had past. "Lyons said you were good at hiding and little else. Not sure how far that will get you in life, but it's a start, I guess. You and I will be getting in and out of a very dangerous area, disguised as wastelanders. I expect your input on choosing our camouflage accordingly. We'll need to pass for people that belong out there. On the off chance they discover us, our bodies won't tell them much."

 _Anyone who mistakes_ her _for a scavver is either blind or drunk_ , Amari thought to herself. "I'm not a wastelander," she pointed out. "I'm a vault-dweller."

Cross wasn't really listening. "With no vault? No, you're a wastelander now." She slowed her pace, allowing the rest of the group to get slightly ahead of them, and dropped her voice almost to a whisper. "Another thing: don't tell anyone else about where we're going. Anyone asks, we're travelling to Vault 112 to check on an asset. The Elder's limiting the details of our mission to the council for now. He doesn't want to cause a panic. Lyons implied you already knew something about this business. That you poked the sleeping dragon by catching one of their bots."

This seemed ominous, and Amari wondered dimly why she hadn't asked Lyons for more details. "What _are_ we doing?"

Quite apart from reassuring her, the fierce grin Cross gave her made her take an involuntary step back. "Reconnaissance. We're going to scope out the Enclave."

When they arrived at the fortress at the edge of the river, it was evening. The Citadel was everything Penny had described and more, a veritable castle keep straight out of an old book, but there was no time to take it in, and no opportunity to look for familiar faces. At least there were walls on every side again. She could breathe easy once the heavy gate closed behind their group. One young woman whisked away her belongings, while another ran a metal wand over her body, looking for hidden weapons. In a small, windowless concrete cell, she was treated to a long line of visitors in grey robes bearing the conditions of her stay. Under their watchful eyes, she was fed, inoculated against _something_ ("For your protection and ours," the scribe holding the needle told her brusquely), and briefed extensively on the rules and expectations for her conduct. After two hours of this treatment, they invited her to a meeting. _As if I had a choice_ , she groused internally, standing up to follow her guide.

Matthieson, the scribe who led her through the concourse, was outwardly friendly and hospitable. Even so, there was a contemptuous edge to her tone, as if she sought to remind Amari of her low position with every syllable. "We don't often entertain uninitiated visitors, particularly not at the council table. You should feel honored."

Amari didn't _feel_ honored. Her reception had been cold and invasive thus far, and that coming on the heels of a stressful day made it hard to feel anything but apprehensive. She also didn't know they would find significant about her knowledge. She'd been a part of two communities, true - the vault and Megaton - but surely the council wasn't interested in those. What little she'd learned about the world and her place in it had been different degrees of horrible, and she didn't think the Brotherhood wanted to hear her gibbering about disorientation and fear.

"What will I say?" she asked aloud, half to herself and half to the woman who led the way up stairs and down them and through tunnels.

"You'll answer questions, that's all. If you know something important, we'll find it out in the end." As if to make amends for this slightly threatening remark, she added, "If we have a weakness, it's a blind spot where the Wasteland is concerned. We aid people out there. Sometimes, we recruit them away from their farms and settlements. But we don't engage in many other kinds of give-and-take with them. Your fresh perspective may be a valuable one."

The scribe showed her to a chair on one side of a great round table, and Amari gripped the seat to prevent her hands from trembling as people filed into the room, talking quietly amongst themselves. She recognized Sarah Lyons and a few of her lieutenants, but by and large these were strangers. No one sat in the chairs immediately to her right or left, making her feel isolated, like she was some exotic spectacle put on display. Cross came in last on the heels of a venerable old man and a melancholic young boy, shooting Amari a look that was neither reassuring nor hostile.

The meeting began with a series of recitations that sounded archaic to Amari's ears, a liturgy of principles and history that were all foreign to her. She lost track of the words as scribes and soldiers took it in turn to stand up in order to report on gains and losses, achievements and setbacks. From Vargas, Amari heard Jennings' name in the list of recent casualties and wondered with a pang of sorrow how Penny was coping. She hadn't seen her in the courtyard, not that she'd had much time to look around. Would her grief allow her to stay with the Brotherhood?

All too soon, the attention of the room turned to Amari as the old man took a drink from his glass, cleared his throat, and climbed shakily to his feet to address her directly, "Welcome, vault-dweller. Amari. My daughter has told me how you and your companion willingly offered aid to the Brotherhood. You have our thanks." He coughed, then continued, "Scribe Rothchild is going to ask you some questions now. You may not understand their relevance, but we only ask that you answer to the best of your ability. Information about the world beyond the ruined city is more valuable to us than you can imagine." He settled painfully back into his seat and gestured to the man on his left.

The aforementioned scribe didn't rise, but eyed Amari beadily over his thick sheaf of papers. "Now then," he began grimly. "First question. What significance, if any, do you attach to the phrase 'Garden of Eden Creation Kit' or 'G.E.C.K.'?"

For some of Rothchild's questions, including the first, Amari was perplexed. Wanting to be helpful, she initially tried to guess at what he wanted, only to be told sharply that she should answer only the questions that she knew. After the twentieth question about the history and practices of Vault 101, Amari began to be uneasy, wondering if she had erred in giving up too much too freely. The Brotherhood _seemed_ benign, and they'd certainly been benevolent toward her, but the last six months had taught her that it was prudent to not count too much upon the good nature of others. While she didn't feel _much_ for her former community, she also didn't want to hand them over to powerful and opportunistic outsiders. She hedged her answer to the next question - one about the collective armament of the vault - feigning ignorance. To her surprise and relief, Rothchild moved on without a word.

Megaton, too, was interesting to them, and there was a murmur of approval from the group when she reluctantly detailed her role in Moriarty's downfall. What they _really_ wanted to know about, however, was her observations on the Enclave, and this meant Amari had to learn something too. The history Rothchild related in turn almost defied belief, but the grey-heads around the table nodded their assent to every fresh point. Some of the people in the room had participated in the skirmishes, Rothchild explained. "It all happened before we came to the Capital Wasteland."

"You're saying you fought with them on the other side of the _country_?" California was an abstract point to label on a geography test, as far as she was concerned; she knew vaguely where it was, but it wasn't a real place to her. "So you what, chased them here?"

"Their final defeat took place almost thirty years ago," Rothchild clarified stiffly. "Unfortunate, our failure to act quickly once they had suffered a crippling loss meant that a sizable amount of their force escaped. To where, we didn't know until recently. They've been quiet. We have to assume that their abhorrent methods haven't changed, however."

"I only know what Moira - my former employer - suspected about them," Amari said slowly. "It's true that she made me catch one of their eyebots, but I don't know what she got out of it. Unfortunately, she was killed by Talon mercenaries a few weeks ago. I salvaged some of her notebooks, but her remarks are incomprehensible. And barely legible. I don't think she learned much."

Her questioner exchanged glances with the old man. "Despite your caveats, we'd like to see those notebooks. Even the smallest piece of information could be useful."

Amari nodded, covering a yawn. "I don't know where my stuff is right now, but you can have them tomorrow. They're just extra weight to me."

"Very well. Next question: based on your observations, what effect does the Enclave propaganda appear to be having on the average wastelander? Is their station commonly played on public radios?"

The questions went on for what felt like hours. When he finally dismissed her, Amari stood up on shaky legs, glad to be done - and glad that the old man hadn't taken her publically to account for her less-than-truthful presentation of herself. Maybe it didn't matter to him. Maybe Cross hadn't told him. While she hadn't enjoyed her speaking roles, she had been more than content to listen in her turn, learning more about the Brotherhood - and, in turn, more about the Capital Wasteland.

Amari realized as she started toward the exit that she had no idea where the girl had taken her things, had not even learned her name in the bewildering moment of entering the Citadel. She groaned inside and steeled herself to approach one of the stone-faced people who now congregated in little clumps, speaking in low tones. Before she had gotten up the nerve, however, she came face to face with the boy.

Up close, she found him more wistful than sad, and there was a strength to his demeanor that was surprising to find in a child. When he spoke, it was with a studied, articulate manner that slightly undid his attempt to appear mature. He was trying far too hard to be successful.

"Ms. Amari, I thank you on behalf of my people, for your information and for your vow of service as regards the Elder's task. We will not forget it. You may call upon us for future aid. Within reason, of course."

She nodded gravely. "It was my pleasure, Mr...?"

"Arthur," he broke in gloomily. "Just call me Arthur, please."

Seeing as she had no idea who he was, she didn't know what else she would have called him. "It's nice to meet you, Arthur. Are you here with your father?" It was odd that he was here, really. There were no other children in the room, and a glance at her Pip-Boy told her it was quite late. She only just restrained herself from asking if it was past his bedtime.

His face fell, then brightened. "No. My parents are dead. But that means _you_ don't know who I am. That's excellent. I don't meet many outsiders. I'm a Maxson, you see." He said the name as if it were a title, like "prince" or "king," but this flair of grandeur only perplexed her.

"Sorry? What's a Maxson?"

His smile broadened and his voice took on a hint of pride. "It means I'm meant to be a leader among our people. An Elder someday, if they choose me. If I earn the position. I've been preparing for that my entire life."

"Is that what you want, Arthur?" Seeing his confusion, she clarified. "I mean, my father was Overseer in our vault. He wanted me to become Overseer after him. I was training for that until it became impossible, but it wasn't what I wanted at all."

Arthur eyed her sternly, and a little pityingly. "It doesn't matter what I want. My name means something to my people; therefore I will serve them. Your vault - do they still need you, or did someone step up in your place?" His expression darkened. "Was there a coup? I've heard of such things..."

She almost laughed, even though his words pricked at her conscience. Who _would_ take over from her father now? "No, no coup. The Overseer's still alive and well, I hope. He'll choose another replacement in time." Of this, she wasn't so sure. The man she'd seen on that day had been unbalanced and incapable of rational thought. She shivered, and then she yawned. It had been a very long day. "Arthur, do you know where the girl who met me at the entrance would have taken my bag? I need to rest, but I don't know where to go."

He nodded eagerly, a child again. "Yes. You're staying with the female initiates. They always have extra beds. Follow me." He started walking, talking all the while. "The girls are so _noisy_. I don't know how anybody sleeps there. If you need a better place to stay, my room is _very_ quiet."

Amari suppressed the urge to laugh again at this earnest and innocent offer. "Thank you, I'll keep that in mind." He was setting a quick pace forward, turning right or left at intersections that all seemed identical to Amari. "How long does it take people to learn how to navigate the Citadel?"

"It took me a few months to learn all the twists and turns after I got here. Now I'm an expert!" He grinned back at her. "The Elder says you're staying a whole 'nother day with us. If you want, I'll show you around tomorrow."

* * *

Arthur might have been a lonely and formal boy, but he was still a child with a child's unquenchable energy. Amari had trouble keeping up with his fast-paced tour on the following morning. "Don't you have to go to school?" she asked, pausing for breath at the top of a flight of stairs.

" _All_ the squires do. Me, I have to go to tutoring with the Elder and Scribe Rothchild too." Her young guide grimaced, then brightened. "That's why I'm glad you're staying an extra day. My teachers said that spending time with someone like you is _educational_ and that I should make the most of it. We don't get many visitors."

"I've gathered that," she huffed, remembering the cold reception she'd received on her arrival. "Why not?"

"Ah… no offense, but the Codex warns us about outsiders. ' _Shield yourself from those not bound to you by steel, for they are the blind. Aid them when you can, but lose not sight of yourself.'_ But you seem harmless, and, more importantly, the Elder vouched for you. His word is law among us. The Codex says that too."

Amari heard the undercurrent of religious devotion in his voice - had heard enough of that sort of thing from the Children to last her a lifetime - but she made herself answer respectfully. "What's the Codex?"

"Our history. Our principles. Our laws. My ancestor, Roger Maxson, founded our order in the aftermath of the War and the scribes translated his mission into written form." There was little boastfulness in his remark; rather, his young face grew pinched and solemn with the weight of the responsibility. "My life's work is to uphold what he began."

Amari thought about the weak, anarchical, and dissolute individuals and groups she had encountered thus far. She considered her own vault, where the only constants had been suppression and control. Compared to most, the Brotherhood of Steel seemed admirable. "Your people have built something lasting and powerful," she said sincerely. "You should be proud to be a part of such a legacy."

"I _am_. I just wish I understood more about life outside this place." He looked up at her hopefully. "Last night, you told us a lot about your vault. Can you tell me what it was like to actually _live_ there? Is it true the Overseers perform experiments on the residents? I've heard all kinds of rumors from the failed vaults we have excavated."

Amari laughed, shook her head, and tried to think about something she could tell a child. It wasn't often that she had a chance to tell anyone about the good times. "Ours was pretty normal. When I was a kid, it wasn't so bad. Back then, my best friend was _always_ getting me into trouble…"

* * *

Deep inside Underworld, Richard sat at the bar and metabolized ethanol, drinking in the dizzying impact of being awake to a full range of sensations. He savored not only the bite of the wretched beverage, but also the melange of emotions that came with new experiences: satisfaction over where his newfound independence had brought him, mild anxiety over sitting in a public place unarmed, thanks to the burly bouncer at the door, and discomfort at being the only "smoothskin" in town. His world was a blur of color and flavor that slapped him in the face at every turn. The plunge he'd taken could drive a man insane, he decided; fortunately, he was much more than just a man. Until recently, he had been much less, lacking the most essential component: free will.

In the days since he'd stumbled away from Rivet City in the dark, blind with rage, fear and confusion, he had gone from cursing his creators and liberators for making him all-too-human to blessing them with his newfound soul. He'd been forced to kill his way to this refuge, but the novelty was still there. Every person he met was a fellow participant in this freedom, and he wanted to connect with that somehow. In a moment of glorious spontaneity, Richard found that he needed to talk to the nearest person available. Wanted to say something - anything at all - to Ahzrukhal, the loathsome creature behind the bar.

"Your man at the door - focused, isn't he?" In his analysis of the room, Richard had marked the colossus on guard as the only real threat, and he suspected the bouncer had done the same for him. Fixed firmly on him, those faded blue eyes hadn't blinked yet.

"You have no _idea_ , good sir. Charon is the most loyal employee I could ask for. Not that he has any choice in his devotion, mind you." Ahzrukhal grinned unpleasantly. "I hold the key to his conditioning. His contract. It's just a piece of paper to you or me, but he can't lift a finger without my say-so. And right now, I say he protects my bar."

"What happens if someone else picks up the contract?" Richard found himself struggling to contain and understand his own feelings. The sympathy he felt for Charon - a slave much like he had been - was something new, as was the anger he felt on the ghoul's behalf. How dare Ahzrukhal presume to leash a sentient creature's autonomy? His hands clenched around his empty glass and spidery cracks shot through it, but the bartender didn't notice.

"I don't leave it lying around." Ahzrukhal chuckled and drummed his knuckles on the wall safe behind him. "Unless you have five thousand caps in that bag of yours, I'm afraid you'll never see it. I do have room in my employ if you're interested..."

He never got a chance to finish the offer. That's when Richard made his choice. The poison he'd been drinking had slowed his reflexes, but not enough to give the oblivious bartender a fighting chance. The lukewarm dregs of soup which he dashed into Ahzrukhal's rheumy eyes were harmless enough, but the sharp-edged spoon pressed against the necrotic skin over the ghoul's cardioid would end his life in a few heartbeats. Richard had only to apply pressure.

"I'm going to teach you a lesson about freedom now," he promised. "We'll see what your employee does without your 'key'."

"Charon!" Ahzrukhal croaked. "Get him off of me, you useless lump!"

"Do nothing, Charon," Richard said firmly. "I can still jam this piece of metal through his throat with half a pound of shot in me. Move and your employer dies." He thought for a second. "Put your weapon down and slide it away or he dies." The big ghoul did so, never taking his eyes off of Richard.

"Now for your safe, Ahzrukhal." He jabbed the spoon a little harder, drawing blood, as he drew his hostage to the wall.

"Fine! Fine! You won't get away with this. The combination is eighteen, forty six-"

"Not necessary," Richard muttered. This scene was likely to attract too much attention from the rest of the Underworld, and he needed to end it quickly. With his free hand, he tore the locking mechanism out like it was a piece of rotted cloth. In a moment, a faded yellow document was in his hands. Without letting up the pressure, he turned back to the bouncer. "Is this enough, Charon? Do you still need to obey him?"

Charon shook his head and Richard let his speechless captive go, returning to the other side of the bar with another fluid movement. Dipping the document into a nearby candle, he let it burn and resumed his drink, waiting with avid interest to see what would happen next. If being human was an endless series of experiences like this one, then he'd never look back.

* * *

After the trembling waitress had finished mopping up Azhrukhal's remains and quietly resumed serving drinks, Charon returned from wherever he had disappeared to after killing his former master and sat down next to Richard. The two men sat in silence for a long time before the ghoul finally spoke, "Why did you do it?"

"I don't know." Motivation - even his own - was still a dark area for Richard. He wasn't sure if he had acted more out of sympathy for Charon, dislike of Azhrukhal, or simply his own curiosity. It reminded him of all the times Amari had pressed him for his reasons, and of the frustration that had caused both of them.

His answer wasn't good enough for Charon either. "Why did you burn the contract? It was valuable. I know my own worth. You threw away a fortune when you did that."

Richard had a ready answer for this. "I didn't want your servitude."

Charon was quiet for a long interval, making Richard suspect that he'd offended the ghoul. "Can I come with you?"

"No."

"I need direction. I don't know how to choose for myself. But I _am_ otherwise capable. I'd be an asset. My skills aren't on your level, but-"

"I don't need you. I don't want you. I don't care where you go. You have to learn to make your own decisions, or be a slave your whole life. _That's_ the choice you have to make."

Charon stood up. "What _was_ this?" he asked tonelessly. "Why would you free me if you didn't care about the consequences one way or another? Was this an experiment to you? Some kind of game?"

Richard shrugged, then offered a partial explanation. "I'm learning how to be human."

This was met by a surprised laugh, and just a hint of fear. "I think your act could use a little work then. Well, goodbye, whoever or whatever you are… and thanks. I guess. Azhrukhal was a terrible person. I did terrible things for him."

Ten minutes later, Richard was on the road, alone. On the off chance that Azhrukhal had allies, he wouldn't let himself be caught unaware. Charon had been standing outside when he left, talking to the female ghoul on guard, but both ignored him pointedly as he passed.

It wasn't that he _wanted_ to be alone, Richard thought irritably. He didn't need Charon, and Charon didn't _really_ need him, only had to grow a spine and figure his own situation out. It wasn't like the ghoul was a fresh-hatched vault-dweller, scared of his own shadow and incapable of using lethal force. Someone like that _would_ need all the help they could get.

When Richard thought about Amari, which was often, he mostly imagined her dead and this troubled him more than he would have expected. Even with the so-called Brotherhood of Steel helping her, _something_ out there would chew her up sooner or later he knew - a mutant, a raider, an overgrown radroach. Almost anything could do it. This was an unpleasant thought, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he ought to do something to prevent it. That he'd erred in leaving her behind without a second thought in his headlong rush to understand himself. These were interesting feelings (if painful), and Richard decided there and then that he wanted to experience more of them. And what better place to learn about emotional attachment than with the first person who'd treated him well?

 _I'll find her_ , he resolved. _Or I'll find out what happened to her. If she's alive, I'll keep her that way. Maybe she has something to teach me in return._ Richard never doubted for an instant that he could track her down eventually; some sixth sense told him he was a natural at that sort of thing.


	14. How Many Miles to Babylon?

"I appreciate the effort, but it's still too heavy," Amari told the quartermaster, a taciturn older man who was helping her on with a set of what he had laughably called 'light' armor. "I can barely lift my arms in this, let alone walk. Can't I just wear what I was wearing before? I've only been shot once and this wouldn't have helped with that." She was directing these complaints at Cross, who'd been the one to insist on her being 'outfitted properly'.

"Negatory," Cross said from across the room, where a nervous young squire was adjusting a battered, camouflaged version of recon armor to fit her frame. "Our research says this is what wastelanders wear. Wastelanders who like their vital organs, anyway."

"Newsflash: wastelanders wear whatever they can beg, borrow, or steal. Some raiders go naked. I'm not strong enough for armor," Amari said flatly. "I'll take my chances."

Cross shrugged off the assistant, walked over to a shelf, and pulled out something that reminded Amari of the vault security guard's gear. "Fine. Put this vest on over your clothes. It'll offer you some protection from small caliber fire that hits you in the right place at just the right angle. Don't come crying to me when you're dead."

"I won't," she promised happily, changing quickly into the clothes provided her - sturdy, well-built things that only _looked_ like rags. The vest lay like a lead blanket on her chest, but she thought she could adjust to it in time. It was nice to have _some_ protection.

Traveling with the uptight paladin promised to be a special sort of challenge, Amari decided as they left the Citadel together. Like Richard, she was competent to the extreme; unlike Richard, she didn't care in the slightest for what Amari had to say. As a conversationalist, she wasn't much better than her one-time android companion. She also didn't seem to like Amari all that much. This made their anticipated week on the road a somewhat daunting prospect.

"Where are you from?" Amari asked after an uneventful hour in which Cross had _only_ killed one thing - a molerat that had made the fatal mistake of poking its naked snout too close.

"Does it matter? You've never heard of the place."

"I'm still curious. You know my story; I want to know more about you."

A long-suffering sigh. "I was born at the Brotherhood bunker in Lost Hills, in what was once southern California. I was already thirty when I accompanied Elder Lyons on his holy pilgrimage to the east."

Straining to remember the details of what she'd learned the other night, Amari mulled over the implications. "You're in your mid- _fifties_?" She didn't know why Cross would lie, but her estimate would have undercut that by twenty years, based on the woman's unlined face.

"I'm fifty-three," came the terse reply.

"Wow." She tried not to sound skeptical, but she found herself eyeing the woman, searching for a clue to explain the incongruity. "You must drink a lot of water. Or something. You don't look it. At _all_."

The older woman sighed again, this time with an air of resignation. "I was critically injured in combat, several years ago. Then, I _was_ getting too old for the field and I paid for it. But for Scribe Rothchild's skill, I would have died. He saved me, using specialized medical resources he found in the belowground chambers of the Citadel, but… there was a cost. The cybernetic implants he used changed the way my mind and body work, transcending the limits of biology. I now need little food or sleep to function. Even so, the blessed Elder's tolerance permits me to stay. To serve is my reward for a lifetime of dedication."

Amari blinked. _Permits me to stay?_ she repeated to herself. _Would the Brotherhood normally exile someone like this?_ She chose next her words carefully. "I once had a companion who wasn't entirely human either. He's gone now, but what he was didn't matter to me. The concept of 'human' is only as meaningful as one's actions." This wasn't the best example, she mused privately; Richard had been confusing, erratic, and extremely violent, but Cross wasn't to know that.

"No, Amari." Cross's voice was patient and firm, as though she were explaining something very simple to a child. "'Human' _is_ what matters. Biology is important, despite all its limitations. Therein lies the only tolerable future. Abominations like me don't belong in the world to come. The Codex is very clear on that subject. You might be pitiful and weak, but you're more important than I could ever be."

Quietly uncomfortable over this backhanded compliment, Amari was still mulling over her recent history lesson. "That sounds a little bit like what Scribe Rothchild was saying the _Enclave_ believed," she began slowly. "Their definition of humanity excluded everyone except themselves. How do you reconcile-"

"The Brotherhood is _not_ like the Enclave," Cross broke in hotly. "Their methods were - _are_ \- reprehensible, a violation of our most sacred principles. In their way lies death and run for all. You will not compare them to us." The subtext said _Or else,_ and Amari shrunk back, intimidated by the tone and the emotion she had provoked, even though the question had gone unanswered. She decided then and there that she would keep any future negative thoughts on the Brotherhood to herself. They might be the better option than the Enclave, but they were still a very insular group of fanatical people. A barely-tolerated outsider like herself would do well to keep her mouth shut.

As a peace offering, she tried to flatter her new companion. Unsuccessfully, she suspected. "I never would have guessed you were… augmented. He did a really good job."

Cross said nothing, but her expression suggested that this had failed miserably. Neither of them brought the subject up again and conversation died as Amari labored to continue putting one foot in front of the other, sparing no extra breath for speech.

The extra ten pounds of weight in addition to her usual travel gear meant Amari tired even sooner than usual. Breaks became an hourly necessity by mid-morning and their pace slowed to a crawl. Personal pride kept her going a little longer than she thought she could but, after watching her struggling along behind, Cross sighed and called it an early night, though not before shooting a pointed look toward the sun, which was still a hand's breadth above the horizon.

Tired though she was, Amari wanted to redeem herself and volunteered to cook dinner. Brotherhood field rations were boring, but safe. Identical packets of dry noodles made from rough-milled grain, desiccated vegetables, and powdered jerky, they were nourishing, if uninspired. Wanting to be of _some_ use, Amari took it upon herself to prepare these meals and search out water to run through their portable filtration device. Cross had spoken truefully, however: she needed very little sustenance to go on, and Amari soon found that she was primarily filling her own belly.

"What _am_ I doing here, exactly?" Amari asked on the morning of the second day. The night before had brought them to the charred shell of a once-grand house just beyond the edge of the city. It happened to be near an office park that she and Richard ( _mostly Richard_ ) had once cleared of raiders while searching for an old hard drive. It was tantalizingly close to Megaton - and to the vault, for that matter. "You can't tell me that you _need_ me. I know better."

"We do occasionally work with outsiders in the field," Cross said. "It is not a widely-supported program, but the Elder encourages such cooperation as an investment in the future. But this is not what that is. I do _not_ need you and would rather have any young squire at my back in a fight. Young Maxson, for example. Now _there's_ a boy who can follow orders _and_ take initiative. Good lad."

Cross stood and kicked dirt over the dying coals of their fire, hoisting her pack over her shoulders. "I would have gotten much further on my own yesterday. _I_ would not have stopped at nightfall either. You're slow, weak, and fearful. You belong indoors doing something soft and safe."

Amari's face burned with humiliation and anger. Few people had ever pointed out her inadequacies quite so bluntly before, but the woman seemed unaware that she had said anything insulting. Turning away, looking up the slope to her right, toward the long walk that led to town, Amari thought about her one-time haven that now lay so near at hand. Without Richard's company dragging her reputation down, she expected Megaton would make room for her again. Would Cross allow her to leave if she asked? Did she even _want_ to go back there?

Even as Amari processed these thoughts, Cross was speaking over them. "Of course, this trip is not about efficiency. The job _will_ get done - that's a given - but a few extra days won't matter."

"Yeah, yeah. 'Life is about the journey, not the destination'," Amari snapped back. "You got any more sage wisdom to lay down?"

Unless one maligned the Brotherhood (or lied to her), Cross was frustratingly hard to provoke. "This is a trial run, child. The Sentinel is interested in your potential and asked me to observe you under challenging circumstances. Had she not, I would have done this alone or with a competent brother or sister. Planting a surveying device at the edge of Enclave territory is a relatively simple task, but it does allow me sufficient time for me to evaluate you as an ally."

"Well? Have I already failed?"

Cross either didn't notice the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. "Your deceit with regard to James _did_ put you on a knife's edge from the start," she said icily. "However, I am reserving judgment. It may be that you have hidden depths and talents." She started walking, throwing a question casually in her wake. "Did you want to stop in Megaton? It's well out of our way, but I've seen you looking in that direction. I don't mind a detour."

Amari wondered how much Cross had guessed about what she was thinking and squirmed inside. _Still_ , she thought, _I have some right to have second thoughts_. What had begun as a simple quest to find James was ballooning out of control, with the Brotherhood, Three Dog, Deacon, and Doctor Li laying new burdens on her at every turn.

From time to time since leaving the vault, Amari had taken muted solace in the fact that her expulsion had freed her from the predestined path of her life. If only she could survive, she could (theoretically) do anything, be anything she wanted. She didn't have to follow her father's path or stay in her friend's shadow anymore. The reality that she'd spent much of that time struggling just to survive had taken most of the joy out of this freedom, but it was still a silver lining to her.

Lately, though, this had become much harder to appreciate, because even the illusion of freedom was fading. She wanted to shout at those who bothered her to leave her alone, once and for all. _I'm nothing! I'm nobody!_ What she wanted didn't seem to matter to anybody, however, though she wasn't sure what it was she actually wanted.

 _As long as you don't know who you are, you're letting others decide for you._

Marilyn had told her that once, frustrated over her complaints at being railroaded into succeeding her father. The conversation had ended in a fight, of course, like most of their conversations at that age. To make things worse, the results of the G.O.A.T. exam a month later had cast a pall over their relationship that had never quite dissipated. Now, too late, Amari had to admit that her friend had been right, though she didn't know how to apply that lesson.

"Well?"

 _On the other hand, maybe Cross wants me to give up_. Amari decided then and there that she didn't want to give her the satisfaction. Coming to a decision, she adjusted the strap of her pack and prepared sore limbs for another long march. "I don't want to stop there. Let's just go."

Her only answer was a grunt, but Amari found that she wanted to keep talking. "They offered me a place, after… I could have run the store in Moira's place. All it would have cost me was a little compromise. When push came to shove, they… even the best of them lacked moral fortitude. That's my way of saying I expected more from the place I called home. I guess that's the stupid vault dweller in me… not that my vault was that great either."

"Not at all." All Amari could see of Cross was her retreating back, but she thought the uncompromising voice sounded approving for once. "It's never easy to walk away from a sure thing. Some of the most principled people I've ever met were also the loneliest."

Amari thought about Moira then, and what her refusal to bow to Moriarty had cost her in the end. It made her feel the faintest stirrings of pride to feel herself compared even in passing to her first friend on the outside. Only slightly aware of it herself, she stood a little straighter and continued down the road as though she had finally earned the right to be there.

Traveling in Cross's company, not bound to return to Megaton every night, Amari found herself seeing more of the Capital Wasteland in a few days than she had in all the months before. The soldier consulted no maps, yet never seemed to doubt her course. For the first time, Amari visited some of those places that Moira had wanted to know vicariously through her, and it hurt to know that it was too late.

Early their second day, Amari gave her Pip-Boy's map a circumspect look and noticed that they were passing within a mile of Fort Independence and the Fairfax ruins, giving the town limits a wide berth that took them off the main road. Desperate to show off what little knowledge she had, she gave voice to some of her buried thoughts.

"Moira - did you ever meet her? - wanted me to check that place out out. She said there was an old armory there. She wanted some new tech to play with." Amari felt a new jab of shame at the memory. "I told her I couldn't go. It was too far and too dangerous for me." That had been before Richard, of course. With him, she could have... but there hadn't been time to explore those options.

Cross answered without turning, her gaze constantly roving over their surroundings. "I met her once. I understand she didn't survive the recent conflict in Megaton. A pity. There are so few people of science left in the Wastes. She shouldn't have asked you to make that trip alone, though. That was irresponsible of her."

Amari agreed wholeheartedly, but didn't say so out of loyalty to Moira. Instead, she asked the question that had been puzzling her since she'd noticed their detour.

"What's there that we're avoiding? Raiders?"

Cross threw a distracted look at the distant complex, still shrouded in mist from a cool, wet morning. "No, not raiders. In the past… but no. No longer." She seemed flustered and uneasy for the first time since she'd introduced herself. Under her breath, apparently unaware that Amari could still hear her, she mumbled something that sounded like, "Fool! Should have veered further north, Talon notwithstanding."

It wasn't long before Amari realized the source of her companion's concern. The seasoned warrior had certainly noticed them long before she did - hulking figures in power armor, fading in and out of the morning fog. Unless she was mistaken, they were headed straight toward them.

"Friends of yours?" Amari asked, her voice quavering. She didn't know much about the Enclave, but she knew that they wore power armor. And that they only took prisoners for nefarious reasons.

" _Hush_."

To Amari's relief, the armor they wore wasn't the gleaming, inhuman design she'd seen on Rothchild's slideshow of horror and devastation. It was, however, very like the damaged suits of red and black she'd seen strewn around the armory where the Outcasts had made their failed defensive stand. The group of four drew near and stopped opposite the two of them. One of them went so far as to draw their weapon, but one of their companions waved it down with an angry, jerky motion.

The aggressive one protested, "But Defender, she's crossed the line-"

Another motion from the leader, this one almost violent in its severity, and the speaker fell silent. Cross didn't move toward her weapons at all, but held her hands up, palms out, and pointed to the northwest, well away from the Fort. Then, she walked forward with Amari following like the frightened shadow she was. The Outcasts made way without speaking, though they were so close they could have reached out and touched them.

Amari made herself follow without looking back until they'd gone several minutes; this was somewhat difficult, as Cross had quickened her pace into a rapid, marching stride that forced Amari to trot to keep up. When she did chance a backwards glance, she discovered that the others were already out of sight.

"What was _that_ about?" she panted at last, when the other woman seemed unlikely to address the question. "Those guys are your enemies, right? So why did they let us pass? Why didn't any of you _talk_?"

The answer came swiftly, ragged with pain and irritation. "'Those guys' are my friends and _family_. People I grew up with. Children I trained. Soldiers I served with. It's more complicated than an outsider like you can possibly understand. I'd rather not give you a history lesson right now. Later."

 _Much_ later, when Cross had once again acceded to Amari's limitations and they had stopped for the night, she brought up the subject of the schism without prompting. "The Outcasts, as you know, think that they're returning to the Codex, that the Elder is in error. As far as they're concerned, Wastelanders are little better than the dirt they live in, and aren't worth the resources it takes to protect and elevate them." She spat into the fire. "They forget that we are all equally human, equally fallen, all corrupted by the original sin that the Codex guards us from.

"Relations between our groups currently enjoy an uneasy ceasefire - we hope that one day they'll return to the fold, while they in turn know they can't match us for numbers and equipment, but hope to lure more converts to their side. We are weaker without them," she said grimly. "And they are dangerously vulnerable out here, surrounded on all sides by hostile forces. I can only hope they'll see reason before it's too late."

Penny had explained some of this to Amari already, but she didn't interrupt. It was reassuring, in a way, to realize that the paladin had misgivings and vulnerabilities. It made her much more relatable and less intimidating.

"This division does not only bring personal grief to many of us, but it also distracts from our efforts to actually _accomplish_ anything. It's… highly frustrating, to put it mildly."

"At least they let us go," Amari said, when Cross lapsed into stormy silence. "After your people took those others prisoner - Specialist Olin and the rest - I would have expected them to respond in kind."

"The survivors of the group you met had trespassed our agreement. And paid for it against the mutants, sadly. We dipped slightly into Outcast territory today. It was necessary, given our target. But, given our direction, the ones we met today could easily guess where we're bound. None of them would interfere with operations against the Enclave. They're the _real_ enemy. It's one of the few things we agree on now, and the only subject of recent communications."

Something about the way Cross explained all this made Amari look at her strangely. It was all true, or so she assumed… but it sounded like a half-truth. There had been something personal about that encounter.

"Was the leader a friend of yours, once?" she asked casually. "Only you two seemed to know each other." This was only a guess - but, based on Cross' expression, a correct one.

"Once," she answered in a tone that invited no further comment. "Go to sleep now. I have the watch."

* * *

"'Little Lamplight'? I'm guessing this was tourist attraction back in the day." They'd been seeing the signs for miles on the highway, pictures of happy pre-war holiday-goers gaping at stylized stalactites and stalagmites by the glow of old-fashioned lanterns.

"Yes." Cross ignored the circle of ramshackle sheds, moving straight for the mouth of the cave. "People used to pay to go inside the cave for some reason. Families. Tourists. School groups. One of these last got stranded here after the bombs fell and formed a society of their own with their own rules and customs. Only the names and faces have changed. They ostracize their own once they reach 'adulthood.' It's both tragic and fascinating."

Sure enough, there were childish faces peering at them from behind gaps in the fortifications, disappearing if Amari tried to go back for a second look. A pint-sized guard - clutching a varmint rifle almost as long as she was tall - waved them in without question, as a smoky generator cranked the trellis gate up high enough for the two of them to enter if they bowed their heads, before sending it crashing down behind them.

A young boy in a helmet and goggles nodded curtly at Cross from atop a second wall, a interior palisade that hid the warmth and light further within from view.

"Cross. You brought the usual goods? It's about damn time. Lucy says everybody under five is showing signs of rickets and scurvy. To add to that, Knock-Knock is _pregnant_ , of all ridiculous, grown-up things. She needs those."

"I brought them," she answered patiently. "This isn't my only job, you know, Mayor MacCready. And there _is_ a solution to your problem. I'll be bringing it up with up with everybody I see, but I thought I'd do the courtesy of speaking to the leadership first."

"Not on your life, mungo. You can take that invitation and stick it up your ass. The rest will say the same, even that sad-sack Sticky." He shimmied down and accepted the three white pill bottles that Cross produced from her pack. He coughed. "Thanks for the vitamins. Knick-Knack can get together a load of fungus for you at an hour's notice. Who the fuck is _this_? You know we don't let just anyone in."

"Amari. I vouch for her. I can't take any fungus this time. Instead, I want lodging for the two of us tonight. And again, on our return trip."

The foul-mouthed 'mayor' gave Amari a series of "warnings" that sounded more like threats before leaving them alone to resume his post. With this seal of approval, the crowd of curious onlookers ventured closer with squeals of delight and increasingly bold avenues of attack, pestering the giant in their midst with questions and clamors for attention, even climbing on her in an attempt to topple her over.

Cross took this treatment with surprisingly good humor. She seemed to know them all by name, asking after their news and knowing at a glance which ragamuffin had had a haircut and who had grown since her last visit.

Watching her with the kids - carrying the smallest on her shoulders as two more dangled, laughing from her hand - Amari realized that there was a side of Cross that she had never seen. It wasn't _maternal_ , exactly, but it was full of love and concern. She remembered, too, the open disgust in the way Cross had spoken about the Outcasts' objection to Lyons' standing order. To the Outcasts, then, the residents of Little Lamplight were beneath notice; to Cross, they were… potential people.

' _Human is what matters'_. _That wasn't just words to her,_ Amari realized. _These are hardly the best and brightest lights of humanity, but she cares for them all the same_.

Much later, when the children had followed someone with the improbable name of 'Eclair' to dinner and the two adults had stayed behind to eat their own rations, Amari asked the obvious question. "Do you have any children? Only, you're really good with them. I was surprised."

Cross was quiet for a very long time. Amari assumed that she'd been offended by the question and was about to apologize, when the older woman spoke up at last, all in a rush as if she didn't dare stop, with short, simple sentences conveying a previously-hidden flood of thoughts.

"Yes. A daughter. Amelia. She's a few years older than you. Her father is buried in California. I carried her for most of three thousand miles to get here. She and Sarah were both very young then. Sometimes I'd carry them both, for miles and miles. God, my arms hurt by the end of those days." Her voice was quiet and distant, her gaze faraway - fixed, perhaps, on children long since grown up.

"Have I met her?" Amari had met so many people in her short time at the Citadel that she wouldn't have doubted it. After living her life around the same two hundred faces, she was no great shakes at remembering names.

" _No_ ," Cross snapped, then appeared to catch herself. "Or not really, I should say. She's an officer - a Protector, they call them - among the Outcasts. The one who let us through today, in fact. I should be grateful that filial affection goes so far… but I'm not. It isn't easy. We haven't spoken since she left."

"I'm sorry." This didn't seem to be enough, so she added. "I hope you and Amelia - and the Brotherhood and the Outcasts - can patch things up eventually. I _do_ understand what it's like to be alienated from family." Privately, she wished there _was_ some love lost between her father and herself, that their sudden separation had been hard for either of them. When she fumbled for positive memories of home, she found instead her hours in the clinic as a child with James, Jonas, and Mari. They were closest thing to a real family she'd ever had, as sad as that sounded.

To her surprise, Cross actually smiled. "Thank you, Amari. You're alright, you know. A little distant, but you have your reasons."

After dinner, there was talk of a more serious nature. Cross's "offer" - the one MacCready had preemptively refused for them all - was the promise of a home at the Citadel for any child that wanted it, as well as safe escort there. She spoke to the whole circle, but Amari could tell that her main focus was on a gangly teenager sulking in the corner, the oldest of the lot.

This was Sticky. Sticky was already well on his way out, as evidenced by the fact that none of the Little Lamplighters would sit by him or speak to him all night. Yes, he was fifteen, he growled in response to Cross' questioning. Sixteen next month. How was that any of her business? No, he was not interested in joining the Brotherhood of Steel. Not in a million years.

Cross was visibly disappointed, but not surprised. She wasn't angry either. Without pressing the issue further, she returned to her games with the younger ones, playing the part of a ferocious bear who carried each giggling bundle back her "lair," only to have them escape behind her back.

At last the cavern became quiet, the fun of the evening at an end as the children filed off to bed or curled up where they lay, sucking a thumb or whimpering in their sleep. Cross had long since followed Mayor MacCready down a passageway to see about a molerat problem. Amari took the opportunity to take one of the vacated chairs near Sticky, who was still sniveling miserably in a corner, his knees drawn up to his chin.

"Why _don't_ you want her help? The Brotherhood could be your ticket to surviving out there. They're the only truly civilized group I've met so far."

His head jerked up and he glared at her, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "I don't need it. She always comes waltzing here, all buddy-buddy with the little-'uns, like she's their _mom_ or something." He said the m-word like it was a curse word. "Fuck that. I'm a _man_ now."

Amari struggled - and failed - to keep a straight face. "No offense, but you're not even sixteen yet. In the vault, we weren't considered adults until we were eighteen."

The miserable expression on his pale, pimply face became ugly. " _Vaults_. Lotta good they do. There's been a vault at our backdoor for more than two hundred years, and they've never come out. Afraid, I bet. Dwellers like you are weak. Not like us. We grow up faster."

"I don't know what happened with Vault 87," Amari admitted. "And you're right: I _am_ weak compared to the native-born Wastelander. _But_ _so are you_. I promise you. The world out there will eat you alive. The things I've seen - the actual, literal monsters - are nothing compared with what some of the people are capable of. You _will_ die."

Underneath the look of scorn and anger he gave her, she saw what she had missed the first time: his apparent arrogance and overconfidence was only a thin veneer. This kid was _already_ terrified and she was making it much worse. She tried to backpedal. "I mean, unless you take precautions," she finished lamely. But it was too late. He snarled and turned away, but not before she saw that he was crying in earnest now.

"Fuck off, m-m-mungo. I d-d-don't need you bringing me down."

* * *

The next day, Amari had to admit, was the easiest yet, despite the fact that their route grew progressively rockier and more difficult as they left the broad highway behind and ventured north. She'd slept well indoors, which helped. Perhaps she was getting stronger and more resilient without realizing it. She half-wished her companion would notice this, but Cross seemed distracted today.

In contrast to the casual persona she'd adopted back at the cavern, Cross became less cavalier and more cautious the closer they drew to Broadcast Tower KB5, where they'd be planting the device. They camped in sight of this landmark, which gleamed like a beacon in the light of the sunset. After a short night, Cross woke Amari in the dark before dawn and handed her a ration bar. From somewhere in her pack, she brought out two stealth boys and handed one to Amari.

"These have been recently charged and serviced. They're guaranteed to give you a solid three hours of use. After that, all bets are off. Have you used one before?"

"Yes." Amari attached the heavy stealth device to her right arm - the one not already burdened with a Pip-Boy. "This looks better than the one Moira let me borrow."

"They're government issue. Anyway, you're my lookout. Backup, maybe. But if anything goes wrong, if anything happens to me, I don't want you to try to finish the job - I want you to disappear and report back to the Citadel, do you understand?"

"Why don't you do this alone?" Amari asked, nervous now that the moment was here. "You don't actually need me."

Cross was still fiddling with the straps on her own stealth-boy, struggling to make them fit around her armor and the bunched muscles of her forearm, and didn't look up. "Not really, no. Do you want to stay here? I won't hold it against you." She shrugged. "I knew you weren't up to much when I brought you out here. You've done okay, though. Better than I expected from the start. It's not your fault this world doesn't suit you. I would still nominate you to the scribes, if that's something you're at all interested in."

Amari was suddenly self-conscious of facing a rare trial of character, one that she was poised to fail. A tiny voice reminded her that it didn't matter what Cross thought about her, that she didn't _really_ want a future with the Brotherhood anyway. She was about to agree, when another voice - one she didn't recognize at first - countered the first:

 _C'mon, Amata. Do it for me, just this once? You know I would have gone just for the view. I never climbed a mountain. I never had the chance._

 _Not you too, Mari. Oh, alright then. Enough with the guilt trip!_

"Never mind. Sorry. I'm going. Like you said, I'm your lookout." She thought a moment. "I'm leaving the vest behind, though. I can move a lot faster without it and it's not like it'll save me from anything the Enclave would be using on intruders."

Cross looked unconvinced and slightly worried, making Amari wonder if she'd spoken any of the internal dialogue out loud, but nodded. "Fair enough. We'll also leave bedding, cooking utensils, and most of our water here so we can travel lightly. If we become separated, we'll return here and wait for the other. Can you remember the spot?"

"Yes." Amari thought this is was probably true, but when her companion wasn't looking, she marked it on her Pip-Boy anyway. Best not to leave anything to chance.

A stream cut through the valley they had to cross, a narrow, shallow channel infested with mirelurks. There were so many that Amari was on the verge of drawing her weapon to help, only to have Cross yell at her to put it away.

"No guns from this point onward, girl. Just stay out of my way."

Cross made short work of the crabs with her hammer. It was almost fun to watch - or would have been, if Amari hadn't been so worried about being spotted by the Enclave or eaten by any mirelurks that got past Cross's mighty swings. She fiddled with the switch on her Stealth Boy, but didn't activate it. They were saving the cloaking devices as long as possible, for when the sun had risen, and there was worse than these overgrown crustaceans to avoid to hide from.

"It's a pity we don't have time for breakfast. Even I could go for a bite of cooked crab. It won't be much good by the time we get back, unfortunately." Though splattered with bits of shell and meat, Cross was unfazed, obviously in great good humor. "Right. Double-time. Across the plain and up the hillside. No great challenge."

By the time she'd scrambled, panting, over the ledge onto to the plateau where the radio tower stood, Amari no longer felt the chill of the early morning. She'd long since tucked scarf and hat into her mostly-empty bag as the exercise warmed her body. The sun had risen, too, melting away the dew and revealing the valley in all its blasted glory. The view was beautiful, even the side that overlooked the craggy rock formation which sheltered the entrance to the underground complex.

" _Annnnddd…_. stealth fields on. I see a pair of soldiers moving in a arc, roughly in this direction," Cross murmured, blinking out of the visible spectrum as she spoke. "We'll descend the same way we came up. Should miss their sweep. Stay down here while I plant the device."

Amari had entertained no intentions of following and offered no argument. She could see nothing in the direction Cross had indicated, but she didn't argue. Through the haze of her own shield, she watched the shimmering blur that represented her companion climbing the skeletal metal structure. Ten feet, twenty feet… fifty feet in the air and still rising. She gulped. Nothing could have persuaded _her_ to make that climb, even assuming she were capable of the feat, but Cross had done it without a thought. For the first time, Amari realized that she was probably afraid of heights, on top of everything else.

 _Fine time to realize that!_ she scolded herself, forcing herself to the edge to search out the tiny, black specks that Cross had observed. They seemed harmless at such a great distance. No great concern to them.

A mostly-invisible Cross rejoined her on the ground twenty minutes later. If Amari squinted, she could just make out the tiny black box secured at the top. With luck, Enclave eyes and technology wouldn't notice it at all.

"We'll know a lot more about what they're doing from this point onward," Cross said with grim satisfaction. "Eyebot deployments, troop movements, radio communications… Rothchild put a lot into those sensors. I don't know what we would do without him. Let's get out of here."

Already tired, Amari struggled more on the downward climb. Twice, her feet went out from under her on a scree of rocks, saved from injury by her protective clothing. She wished they could have ascended (and descended) by the winding road on the far side, but the risk of attracting attention was too high. The satisfaction of seeing the job done - though she'd done nothing to achieve that end - cheered her, though, and it was with a light heart that she tripped and scraped and slid her way to the bottom.

Once on level ground, bound for their campsite, she gave the other blur a grin no one could see. "You did it. We're home free."

"Don't jinx us, girl! I never celebrate until the doors of the Citadel slam shut behind me." But there was a light note in her voice. " _We_ did it. I should always bring someone along for company and moral support. Thanks for coming."

With Raven Rock at their backs, the distance between it and them growing, it was hard not to feel overconfident. By Amari's watch, she still had a solid forty-five minutes left of safety and she could already see the strip of relative greenery ahead where the stream brought life to the valley. Beyond that point, they were home free.

Cross loped merrily ahead, with Amari bringing up the rear. Already feeling secure and confident, she stopped to rub a stitch in her side and drink some water… and froze. _There_ , coming over a low rise from the southeast was another patrol. Four… five… no, _six_ of them, all in a line, presumably bound for their base, in a course that neatly bisected their own just ahead. Had Cross seen them? How could she _not_?

A hand at her elbow almost made her scream. "Okay, kid," Cross whispered. "Bear more _that_ way - and keep moving. Don't stop Some of those newer-model helmets have a HUD that can sense proximity and we can't let them get that close. Follow me and you'll be alright."

Amari _tried_ , but fear, as always, made her stiff and clumsy. The muscles in her calves and thighs that had been fine a minute before now tightened and stretched painfully. The faint disturbance of Cross's figure, barely visible in the bright light, led her by a good fifty feet now. Amari could hear them coming now, feet scraping where the stone was laid bare by erosion. One of them said something, and the others laughed - an canned, mechanical sound that chilled her blood.

Afraid of the noise her own feet were making and too afraid to look back, Amari dropped flat and lay pressed against the earth, willing her body to melt into the shale and dead winter grass. Unmoving like this, against a dark background, she was harder to see, she knew. Cross might lose sight of her like this, but so would the newcomers.

They passed by - so near that she could near the air exchange of their helmet filters - and they kept going. She let out a breath, unaware she'd been holding it, but her relief didn't last long. Barely audible now, she heard three distinct voices talking among themselves.

"Have you got something on the scanner, Pemberton?"

"I'm not sure, sir. Animal, most likely. Back there."

"It's too near the Rock to take chances. _You_ , Private, go flush it out."

"But she's the one-... yessir. Right away."

From where she lay, Amari could smell the murky scent of the stream ahead and the already-pungent dead crabs. Soon, they'd be miles away from here, on their way to another safe night at Little Lamplight. With these happy thoughts in mind, she moved away from the boots that pursued her blindly, first crawling on her hands and knees and then running, no longer caring for the noise she might make in the desperate need to get away before she lost it entirely.

Amari couldn't help it. She turned her head to look. A solitary figure was kicking dispiritedly at rocks and clumps of grasses, searching for an animal that wasn't there while the rest of the column marched away. _Good, they're not looking this way,_ she thought, just as the toe of her boot caught on a protruding root from a long-dead tree and sent her sprawling. She was up in an instant, invisible hands stinging under gloves, knees bleeding. She ran another three steps before her hands blinked back into the visible spectrum. Another two, and she was invisible again… mostly. To her dismay, her legs appeared to begin at the knee, in a bizarre reversal of a double amputation.

 _Oh. God. The fall must have damaged the stealth boy._ She imagined the soldier behind her turning to look at the oddity, could already feel the laser bursts that would end her life. With a wild burst of speed, she plunged into the one, pitiful bit of cover the terrain had to offer - a withered, wind-blasted evergreen shrub whose lower limbs barely concealed her. Not a moment too soon, either, as that was the point at which her cloaking device failed altogether.

Amari huddled on a carpet of dry needles, prickly branches scratching her face and neck. She _wanted_ to reach into a pack to find the tool that could pry the cover off of the malfunctioning device to search for a loose wire, but she found herself frozen with fear. Heavy footsteps were approaching her hiding place at a rapid trot, and while Amari knew she needed to do something - draw her weapon, run, _anything_ \- she couldn't move. All she could do was wait.

The barrel of a laser pistol swept the branches aside and Amari looked up into the face of terror and her own impending death. Inhuman and monstrous, she could hardly believe it was a person and not some machine. She couldn't see the eyes behind the helmet, but she imagined them as cold and pitiless wells; she knew it wouldn't matter what she said, that this was where it ended. That didn't stop her from trying, however.

"Please don't kill me," she whimpered. "I'm nothing. I'm nobody. Please believe me. No one else does."

"Don't move. You so much as look that little gun, and you die. What the hell are you doing out here? This is a bad place for wastelanders." The voice sounded exactly as she'd expected it to - cold and mechanical, devoid of compassion.

Amari could no more have drawn her pistol at that instant than she could have wrestled a supermutant into submission. "I'm looking for scrap," she squeaked, digging for a lie that could save her. "They... uh, Jericho said this was rich hunting grounds. That I could find plenty of copper and aluminum. He's a bastard. Ex-raider, you know. I'm pretty sure he was trying to kill me."

The monster turned to look back, as if seeking guidance from its companions, then sighed and pulled off its head. _Its helmet_ , Amari corrected herself. _Her helmet_ , she amended a second time. The soldier was a woman, barely more than a girl. For some reason, this surprised her. Brown eyes glared down at her from under a close buzz cut, while she tilted the contents of a canteen into her mouth. There was anger there, but also uncertainty and confusion. _She doesn't want to kill me_ , Amari realized with a start. _She's trying to consider another option._ She tried to give her that option, keeping her eyes wide with innocence and fear.

"Yeah, he _was_ trying to kill you. Stupid girl. Where are you from?" Without the helmet to filter out weaknesses, the voice was soft and quick, as if she was trying to speak without being overheard. There was a cultured, polished sound to the accent, despite the fact that she was probably trying to sound tough.

For a wild moment, Amari almost said "The Citadel". She closed her mouth, then opened it again to say "Megaton", but what came out was something closer to home: "Vault 101. I'm the Overseer's daughter. We needed materials to repair our water purifier or I wouldn't have come this far out. Do I _look_ like I want trouble?"

Something changed in the woman's expression. Was that _pain_? Anger? After a moment, she sighed and snapped her helmet back on. "Wait five minutes, then get out of here, vaultie. Don't let them catch you here." As if talking to herself, she added, "Just a two-headed mole rat I put out of its misery. I don't think they saw what I saw." She sighed. "I'll probably get written up - _again_ \- for wasting time. _C'est la vie_." Then she raised her gun and fired into the bush.

* * *

When she reached their designated meeting spot on the far side of the stream, past the carapaces of the mirelurks, Amari found herself being patted down roughly as a tight-lipped Cross checked her over for injuries. She wasn't angry, Amari realized through her shock, only concerned.

"I'm sorry. Truly. By the time I realized you weren't right behind me, they were onto you. I thought you were a goner. You're alright?"

Amari peeled off the useless stealth boy and handed it over, pulling out her medical kit to clean the grazes on her arms and legs. A floating feeling of calm had descended over her, but she suspected it was a fleeting thing. Her nightmares would have some new material to go on. "Yeah, she told me to scram and shot over my head." It had been a near thing, she knew. She'd seen the struggle on that haughty face, but mercy had won out. Barely.

"You got the one Enclave soldier with a heart, then. An idiot, too, to take her helmet off like that in an unsecured situation. I'm sort of glad I didn't put a round through that mixed-up little head. I almost did, consequences be damned. Next time, though," Cross promised. "Even assuming I could recognize an individual soldier in their armor, I don't give quarter to the likes of that."

"She was just a kid," Amari protested. "Younger than me, I think." The girl's words still echoed in her mind. _Get out of here, vaultie. Don't let them catch you here_. She'd said "them." As if she didn't count herself among their number. Something in her expression had changed when Amari told her the half-truth about Vault 101. "The way she looked when I told her I was from a vault… maybe that's why she let me go? They're just _people_ , Cross. They can't all be bad."

"Either they're born into it or they catch them young," Cross said firmly. "There's no reasoning with the conditioning they receive. No cure for fanaticism other than a bullet. No, if and when we fight them in an all-out war, there won't be any prisoners. The NCR erred before by not pursuing survivors aggressively enough and by not giving us free rein to take the offensive. We won't make that mistake."

 _What if they lay down arms?_ Amari wanted to ask. _What about civilian family members?_ Afraid of what she'd learn about the people who'd been her best allies - not to mention a person she wanted to consider a friend - she didn't voice these questions aloud.

The two of them didn't talk much after that. Amari, for one, was too tired to do anything but trudge after Cross on the long walk back to Little Lamplight, lost in her own thoughts. The morning's scare was beginning to catch up with her. She was alive, true, but _why_? Only because of a whim. She wanted to feel gratitude for the person who'd spared her, but what she actually felt was growing resentment. The girl had doubtless already put the incident out of mind, but Amari would never, ever forget how close it had been. _C'est la vie_ , indeed!

Once they reached the cave, she collapsed onto the spare pallet Lucy had pointed out to her on their first night. The raucous sounds of laughter and conversation penetrated the thin wooden walls of the small office building, but Amari didn't care. They could have been holding target practice out there and it wouldn't have kept her awake. If she had any dreams, she didn't remember them.

Once rested, they set out again after Cross had negotiated _something_ in private with the mouthy little mayor. Amari was as apprehensive as she'd been the day before, but for different reasons: it wasn't death or torture she was afraid of this time, but something less tangible.

Whether he was dead, alive, or absent, there was no good ending for this final leg of their journey, and it made her retreat into herself, looking for comfort. A kind, sympathetic version of Marilyn obligingly murmured soothing words into her ear and Amari began to wonder if she was going crazy - after all this, to crack up now would be decidedly disappointing.

So preoccupied was she that she didn't hear Cross the first time she asked a question.

"Sorry, what?"

"What did you _say_ to Sticky the other night? The boy told me and MacCready he'd changed his mind this morning. He said you'd talked him into it but wouldn't elaborate. I'm planning to retrieve him up once we've found James." She chuckled. "Gunny - the training master - is going to kill me for dropping another Wastelander into his lap. He'll make him into someone fit to survive though, mark my words."

"Oh." Amari rubbed her face with embarrassment. She'd been _mean_ to Sticky. A bully, like Butch had once been to her. "I scared him. I told him he'd die out there and that he should take your offer while the offer was good."

"Whatever you said, you did right. But you're not going to take your own advice, are you?" It wasn't really a question.

"No. No offense, but I don't think the Brotherhood is for me. I have other plans." Those plans involved an insubstantial invitation from a known liar and what was possibly the pipe-dream of a new beginning, but she didn't elaborate.

Cross seemed to understand and nodded slowly. "I'll give you safe escort to whatever settlement you want once our business is done. If you change your mind-" She stopped and cocked her head suddenly. "Did you hear that? There's someone following us," she hissed. "Stay down while I investigate."

Cowering beside the charred stump of a once-mighty tree, Amari spotted the dark glasses and coat of their stalker and, before she'd even stopped to consider if it was true, she stood up and shouted, "He's not dangerous! He's a friend!"

Cross may as well not have heard. She didn't lower her weapon an inch. Richard, thankfully, didn't respond in kind, but stayed where he was, standing, hands lifted in a surrendering pose that Anari knew to be meaningless. She shivered. She knew how fast he could move. What _was_ he here for?

"He's someone I know, Cross," Amari said softly. "Don't attack him. Let him speak."

Richard took this as his cue and took another step toward them. "Like she said, I mean no harm. I've been tracking you - tracking Amari - for some time. My name is Richard Deckard."

Cross drew herself up to her full height. "I know what you are," she said coldly. "We've examined your kind before. You're one of C.I.T.'s abominations."

"You may be right, though 'C.I.T.' means nothing to me," Richard answered calmly. "As the saying goes, however: 'It takes one to know one.' I can tell what you are as well. In any case, I'm only here for Amari."

"She has made a commitment to our mission. She can't go with you now."

This seemed like a good time to interrupt. "Guys?" she said. "Hi. I'm still here, you know. Richard's helped the Brotherhood before, Cross. Just ask Sarah Lyons. If he wants to join us, he'd be an asset, trust me. You _do_ want to come, don't you?" she asked him tentatively. "We're going to a vault next."

"Yes," he said placidly. "I want you to teach me how to be human. I've had… difficulties since we parted company. Every situation I encounter ends the same way. I would like to have more options."

"She can teach you when she's fulfilled her obligation to the Brotherhood," Cross cut in harshly. "I travel with _people_ , not the likes of you."

Amari stepped between the two of them, facing Cross squarely although she had to crane her neck to do it. "I've done what you asked. This part is extra. I am going to Vault 112 with Richard. If you want to come, then you'll have to treat _him_ with respect. Otherwise, I'm out. Understood?"

Cross gave her a long, hard look. "Less of your ultimatums, Amari. If you'll recall, _I_ am the one who knows where the vault is."

Amari winced. She looked at Richard, wondering what was going on in his head, where he'd been, and what he'd done in the intervening weeks. His expressionless face didn't give her anything to work with. She looked back at Cross pleadingly.

"Please? It's complicated, but I do have a responsibility toward this man. It's not incompatible with what we need to do. He's _very_ good at what he does. I… trust him." She swallowed, and whispered, though she knew Richard could still hear. "Mostly."

At that, Cross let out a rueful laugh and replaced her gun in its sling. "As you wish. I think I just became third wheel to an android and a vault-dweller. Odd times. Let's carry on. If you mean to get the jump on me, robot, don't think that I'll go down easy."

Cross led them on, while Richard and Amari hung back. He wouldn't tell her what had really happened with Zimmer, no matter how many times she asked.

"Not while _she's_ in earshot," he repeated for the third time.

"She can't hear _that_ well, Richard."

He made a sound. It took her a second to recognize it as a laugh, so strange it sounded coming from him. "So you think. I would like to ask your advice about something that happened in the ghoul city, however…"

They talked - or Richard did anyway, as Amari tried to keep up with the unprecedented flow of conversation. The new-and-improved Richard was a lot more engaging than the old one, but he made her more than a little uneasy with his casual recitation of the actions that followed his impulses.

She answered as best she could, trying to conceal her horror, but could tell he was still frustrated with what he saw as failures. When he lapsed into silence, she patted his arm awkwardly, a little alarmed at her boldness.

"You'll always be… well, someone special, obviously. I want to help you learn to fly under the radar. That would be safer for you, in case the Institute - or C. I. T., I guess - comes after you. I still owe you for saving my life, before."

He shook his head. "We're even now. I'm here because I _want_ to be, not because of mutual obligation." Changing subjects on a dime, he asked, frowning, "Why has she brought us here?"

It was a good question. Cross had come to a halt, but there just wasn't anything here. Amari checked her Pip-Boy's map twice to be sure. Nothing significant, anyway. Just an old garage surrounded by the rusted-out hulks of pre-war cars. The roll-up door was badly battered from the outside and rusted shut to boot. It took the combined efforts of the others to pry it open. The three of them stood back as a wave of sour air rolled out, accompanied by the ominous sounds of animal and insect life.

Amari cleared her throat, taking a prudent step backwards. "Cross? Are you sure about this? It doesn't look right." The entrance to _her_ vault had been appropriately vault-like. A hole in the side of the mountain. This was quite different.

"This is the place," Cross said firmly, drawing the sledge from her back with a smooth, practiced gesture. "Due to a lack of resources, we have not yet undertaken a full investigation of the vaults in the Capital Wasteland, but we do have their locations from the Vault-Tec records we recovered. Vault 112 lies below."

The super-soldiers made short work of exterminating the occupants of the garage. Within ten minutes, the mingled corpses of molerats and radroaches lay piled outdoors, along with a pair of yao guai who'd had the misfortune to surprise them. Amari stood back and watched. She still hadn't fired her weapon on this trip; everytime she put her hand on her weapon, she thought of the charging behemoth and started to shake. _Let them do the fighting_ , she thought weakly. _I'm just along for the ride._

"Some good meat on these things when they're not riddled with trichinosis," Cross remarked, kicking the mangy mutated bear. "I move we carve off a roast and camp above the entrance for the night. We'll crack it open in the morning and see what we will see. Vaults are treacherous places and I'd rather meet it fresh, when we have daylight to retreat to."

Without waiting to be asked, Richard picked up the animal and carried it away from the garage, presumably to skin it for dinner.

"What if we can't get in? What if he's not there? What if we're too late?" Amari was ashamed to find her voice trembling, particularly in the face of Cross's unflappable calm. "It just feels like… with everything else that's gone wrong, this isn't going to work out the way it's supposed to." She wasn't even sure what she wanted from James anymore, but suspected she wouldn't get any kind of closure from a corpse.

"Amari, my mother had a saying: 'Don't worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will worry about itself.' She didn't always follow her own advice - she was about the most anxious, high-strung scribe I ever met - but I did take it to heart. You put all the work you can into a day because that's all you _can_ do. You _plan_ for the future, but you don't let the anticipation of it consume you." Cross offered a rare smile that was probably supposed to be reassuring. "James is alive or he isn't. He's either in this vault or not. All the worry or hope in the world won't change what's actually happened since he left the Jefferson Memorial. I promise you - I'll do anything in my power to find him if it's possible and mourn him if it's not."

She clapped her hands with a gesture of finality. "I'll clean up the vermin. You start gathering wood. Don't go far, Amari - another yao guai would make short work of _you_."


	15. Down the Rabbit Hole

_**AN: Sorry for the long delay. Trigger warning for animal cruelty. Nothing graphic.**_

o - o - o - o - o

There was a little girl and that little girl was _her_.

A whisper in her ear: _Names. Numbers. Hold onto these_. A breath - her first - and it was gone, snatched away like a dream upon waking.

 _Hold onto what?_ she wondered. A reasonable question. Waking had brought forgetfulness and, with it, relief from some distant nightmare. Reality was the warm sun on her face, the fresh-cut grass beneath her feet, and the dimpled ball between her hands. Intrusive and bright, yellow, green, and red crashed down, overwhelming. She narrowed her eyes to tiny slits and examined the ball suspiciously, as if it was to blame.

She had always been holding it. Why, she didn't know. She studied it closely, searching for hidden mysteries, but the pebbled surface gave nothing away. It was, after all, only a ball. The hands holding it, though - those were wrong: too small, too clean, and too pale. A stranger's hands that moved at her command. She closed her eyes, then opened them, but nothing had changed. The disconnect made her shudder and the ball slipped between her fingers and rolled into the street.

She looked around nervously, expecting a rebuke for disrupting the natural order, but there was no one to offer it. From where she stood, she could see neatly-kept lawns, not a blade of grass out of place, blinding white sidewalks, and beautiful houses arranged in a horseshoe formation around a brightly painted playground. Not even a bird or a dog disturbed the scene.

"Hello?" she asked, her voice quivering. This sounded wrong. She tried again, succeeding no better. "Is anybody here?"

 _This isn't right._

"Where did _you_ come from?"

She jumped and wheeled around. Behind her, where no one had been standing a second before, was a child. Shocked blue eyes under a fringe of white-blonde stared at her, the gaze almost perfectly level with her own.

"My God. You're not one of _his_ projections… you're new," the other girl said in a strangled voice. "Another one. Do you know…?" She stopped and offered a smile that looked forced and painful. "I mean, 'you're new!' Hooray! Someone else to play with. I'm Suzie. Do you know how to skip-rope?"

The intensity in those blue eyes made this sound less like an invitation and more like a threat and she took a step backward. "I just want to know where I am. I was… somewhere else. I had a bad dream. Now I'm here. How? And who am I?"

"Not _again_ ," Suzie hissed under her breath and stalked forward, putting her hands on her shoulders to keep her from moving away. "Listen, you're Mary. You got it? _Mary_. It says so on your collar, see? You're a little kid like me. We both live on Tranquility Lane. Please accept it. You _have_ to. _Do you understand?_ " She said all of this very quietly and very quickly, moving her lips as little as possible.

Mary checked the starched collar on her blue-and-white checkered dress. Sure enough, there were four letters there, beautifully embroidered. "No," she said. It felt like an invisible weight was bearing down on her, _pushing_ to accept the truth. Instead of making her agreeable, it made her mulish. Obstinate. "That's not my name. I don't think that's true at all. I thought I was..." she stopped, uncertain. The nightmare was coming back: she'd been cold, immobile, uncomfortable. Trapped in a small space. Wearing different clothes and a different name.

But she _wasn't_ trapped now, was she? The name on her clothes anchored her to this place… and it _was_ a better place. Accepting what was better, accepting the obvious, she slid a little further into a neat stack of ready-made memories that added up to a child named Mary. She lived in the second house from the end. Her mother was gentle, her father stern but kind. She preferred dresses to slacks. She was good at jacks, but bad at marbles.

"I _don't_ understand, actually," she said helplessly. She looked behind her again, searching for support. There had been others in the dream. A man and a woman with rough faces and rough clothes. They had both warned her to be careful.

Suzie demanded her attention shrilly. "I'm _so_ glad you moved to Tranquility Lane with your parents. You'll love it here. Won't you play with me now? It'll be dark soon." There was a desperate edge to the plea now, and Mary looked her in straight in the eyes for the first time. What she had taken for nervousness or excitement at first was actually fear. Suzie was terrified - but not of her. The coming dark, maybe? The sun had almost disappeared behind the row of houses.

"I'll play along," she said slowly. "What game?"

Suzie showed her how to use the jump rope she produced from the pocket of her dress. It was hard at first, but as she fell into a pattern, the other girl began to sing a chanting rhyme, clapping her hands on every beat.

 _Jump, jump, jump a rope,  
Merrily in the spring.  
Hop, hop on each foot,  
As fast as you can sing._

 _Skip, skip, skip a rope_

 _Betty's always near._

 _Leap, leap on your toes,_

 _Or she will know you're here._

Mary tripped, breaking the rhythm. Her shoes were shiny and black and flat-soled, and a poor choice for this exercise. "Are you trying to tell me something?" she panted. "Who's Bet-"

Suzie's face twisted with concentration as she forced out a new verse, nodding vigorously before shaking her head and singing a quick beat that Mary couldn't keep up with up;

 _Jump, jump, jump a rope,_

 _We're hiding in a song._

 _Be, be on your guard,_

 _Or you won't last long._

The song's meter didn't quite work and it struck Mary then than Suzie was improvising on the fly. Shy stopped skipping, holding the rope limply in both hands for a second before handing it back. Slowly, carefully, she repeated her catechism. "Okay, I get it. My name is Mary. I'm a newcomer to Tranquility Lane. There's more to it than that, but that's all I need to keep in my head right now."

Suzie lunged forward with a strangled sob, hugging her tightly. "You're going to be my friend," she breathed into her ear. "Forever. Only first you need to _learn_. Trust me. Accept it. Don't fight it. At least not until it matters."

o - o - o - o - o

Cross roused her early, needing little sleep and impatient to begin the day's work. Richard was already awake, of course. Amari stepped outside into the chill of morning to find that the sun had barely risen over the pile of animal carcasses they'd stacked a stone's throw from camp. Wild dogs had worried them in the night but, safe inside the garage, Amari hadn't even heard them. Breakfast was cold and inadequate, and it was in a bad humor that she tried to warm her fingers over last night's fire while Cross worked to open the vault. Amari watched, anxious about what they'd find within. Apprehension had kept her awake half the night and morning had brought no relief.

While the paladin worked, Amari stood just outside the entrance to the garage, feeling strangely awkward to be alone with Richard, unsure of how things were between them now, with all that had happened.

"So… why _did_ you come back? Really?"

"I'm accustomed to your presence."

A very pragmatic answer, but a Richard who would answer questions, in _complete sentences_ , even, was a new and welcome thing. She blinked against the light behind him, trying to study him discreetly for an outward sign of the change that had taken over him.

"So what _did_ happen with Zimmer?" she asked suddenly. "You never said. I saw what it looked like. I don't blame you if you did it," she added quickly. "If what Deacon says is true… hm, well, _that_ time… then he had it coming. I'm just curious."

"Would it bother you if I killed him?" He seemed curious rather than defensive, as if she was a particularly interesting subject for study.

Amari thought for a moment. _She_ was a killer, as hard as it was to admit it. Most of the people she'd met out here - even the 'good' ones - had pulled the trigger on someone. It didn't make it any easier to accept, however. She settled on an honest answer.

"A little. I grew up without all _this_." With a sweep of her hand, she indicated the world at large, a wasteland full of corpses. "I understand, though."

Richard nodded. "I am responsible for his death. And for his slave. A pity." He said this flatly, as though it didn't matter, but Amari thought she heard an undertone of anger in it. What had it cost him to kill one of his own kind? She made a mental note to ask about it later. Then she remembered Deacon's last warning.

"They _will_ send another retrieval team, you know," she pointed out. "The safest place for you is very, very far from here. You stick out and there's nothing we can do about that. If anyone could make it on their own in the wilderness, it's you."

Richard attempted a shrug, a gesture that looked carefully rehearsed. "They created me to be a weapon and they'll pay for it. I'll be ready. Don't worry. You won't come to any harm. I'll see to it."

"It's not me I'm worried about," she protested, but he pretended not to hear.

It was at that moment that they heard Cross calling from inside the garage. "Let's go. Proceed with caution. Some of these old vaults still have security measures in place. You, synth, with me. Amari, hang back and wait for my signal. You're a liability and I'll take no chances here, not even to give you field experience."

Richard and Amari stepped out of the sun into the dank, dimly-lit cavern of the garage. The metal floor had opened to reveal a staircase leading downward into a passageway illuminated by a cold, artificial light. Just beyond, Amari could see a great door, just like the one that had protected her own vault, this one bearing the number 112. A renewed feeling of homesickness swept over her at the sight. Dwellers now seemed to her like children hiding in a corner, but part of her _wanted_ to be a child again, blissfully unaware of the real world.

Drawing his weapon, Richard took his place obediently. Amari found it in herself to be angry on his behalf.

"His name is Richard, Cross," she interjected. "Not 'synth'. You'll address him correctly if you want his help." Giving orders to Cross of all people, was like challenging a yao guai to a fight, but she did it anyway. Perhaps Deacon's view on things was rubbing off on her or perhaps she simply felt emboldened with a powerful ally at her side. Either way, she resented the woman's blatant hypocrisy. What gave _her_ the right?

Cross made a huffy noise in the back of her throat and started down without a word. Richard gave Amari the smallest of nods and followed after, leaving Amari alone with her thoughts.

She heard the sounds of a fight, but didn't move. She waited, heart pounding out of fear for her companions as well as fear of a different sort. Was James (or his corpse) still down there, after all these months? Had he even made it this far?

Either her quest ended today or there were still more breadcrumbs to follow. She steeled herself for either outcome, preparing her words if today was the day for that meeting. Recent events had stripped away most of her innocence along with her misplaced guilt. Survival was the rule on this side of the vault door and she had become harder by necessity. She made herself a promise: she wouldn't apologize for living. Not again. Not even to James.

Once bidden by a shout from below, Amari descended the stairs cautiously. The first thing she laid eyes on past the door were the remains of several robots - robobrains, she thought - their limbs torn asunder, their domes leaking fluid. One of them was still "alive," but only barely. As she approached, it spoke to her in a wheezing, rattling voice that sounded almost human.

"...you are 202.3 years too late… too late… _bzzzt..._ too late… 202.3 years. Please put on this vault suit and proceed to… _202.3 years_!" Rising to a shrill pitch at the end, these instructions cut off abruptly with a brief string of gibberish followed by silence.

"Did you have to kill these things?" she muttered to Richard, who seemed as calm as always. "They seem pretty hospitable to me."

Cross laughed humorlessly without looking away from the wall-mounted terminal she was busily typing on. Amari recognized this as a twin to the one her father alone had enjoyed exclusive access to in her own vault. That one had been locked away in his office, however, not out in the open.

"Looks can be deceiving. There's a log here on the _last_ person they admitted into Vault 112 and it wasn't two hundred years ago. 'Subject was initially cooperative, then resistant and distressed. Sedative administered. Male resident, name unknown, was placed in Lounger 11 to await the Overseer's tutorial.' There is no record of him 'checking out', so to speak. Alive or dead - and these readings do suggest the former - James is still here. And so are ten other people. Weird vault, even by vault standards." She dug a crumpled, yellowed print-off out her pocket and set to work, glancing back and forth between the paper and the screen.

While Cross attacked the terminal, Amari paced a slow circle around the room, peering through the dusty domes into the pods. With one exception, the people inside, men, women, and children, were withered husks - alive, most of them, according to the displays, but only technically. The life support that had preserved them for so long had left them little more than skeletons, gray skin stretched like cobwebs over their bones. There would be no question of saving _these_ , she knew; with luck, however, James would suffer no ill-effects from his relatively short time under the spell. And, sure enough, he _was_ in there. Completely inert, feeding tube and breathing apparatus attached, he was as plugged in as any of them. He was almost a stranger to her, a remnant from a former life.

The clatter of the keyboard stopped, breaking her out of her reverie. " _Shit_."

Amari returned to Cross's side and glanced at the screen uncomprehendingly. Nothing but letters and numbers. Nothing like the point-and-click library archives she was used to. "What's wrong?"

" _I can't get him out_. We have the Vault-Tec records. We have a lot of the codes. It _should_ have been enough to break into security. Our people have cracked vaults before. Here, though, the pod-release has been locked from the inside. Why they would do that, I'd like to know..."

"You two can pry it open, surely." Amari nodded at Richard, who'd stalked up, catlike, behind them. "Or break it."

Cross shook her head firmly. "No. He's been in there for _months_. Best case scenario, the shock of pulling him out manually causes brain damage. Worst case, it kills him. That's not an option I'll hazard." She rubbed her eyes and sighed. "I'll have to go back to the Citadel, find someone else… I feel uneasy leaving him here even one more day, but I don't see any other way."

"You think someone there will be able to hack it?"

"Probably not. Someone - someone _capable_ \- needs to go into the simulation that's been running all this time and try to unravel it from the inside. Gallows, maybe. I've haven't seen him fail a mission yet." Cross frowned at her. "No offense, but letting you try would be a waste of time."

Letting the offense slide without comment, Amari blinked. She hadn't even considered volunteering until this moment. "So you do it."

"I thought it would be obvious," she snapped back, growing visibly irritated. " _I'm_ not compatible. Neither is the s-... alright, _Richard_. It's meant to interface with a _human_ brain. I don't know what it'd do to us. Best case scenario-"

For the first time, Amari interrupted Cross. "Okay, forget that. What's the harm in me trying?" Now that she'd been belittled, she wanted to prove herself. _Amata_ would never have done that. Amata had frequently done the opposite, in fact.

"Probably none," the soldier admitted. "I'd pull you out before it became dangerous - no more than a day - whether or not you'd achieved your goal. Are you saying you _want_ to?"

"I completed the Anchorage simulation," Amari reminded Cross, glossing over the details of that victory. "And this isn't a war game, is it? I'm not afraid. What's one more day's delay? Maybe I can get him out sooner rather than later." She sounded more confident than she felt, but she was hungry to prove herself for once - to do something, even, that neither Cross nor Richard could do. "Look, it's probably just a bunch of brain-dead people wandering around a simulated dreamscape, right? I should be able to navigate it. I _know_ James. No other volunteer would, right? Not even Gallows."

Cross looked doubtfully back at the screen. "I really can't tell you what you'll find in there. _Something_ is still very active. Could be an array of complicated programs, I guess. Could be the vault-dwellers. Maybe they're still cogent enough to enjoy a sense of community amongst themselves. It could be a walk in the park - though that raises the obvious question of why James hasn't freed himself yet - or it could be an unholy nightmare. It's your sanity on the line. Are you sure?"

Amari mulled the question over. More than the simulation itself, the prospect of being the person others were depending on frightened her. Added to that was the fact that almost every time she'd stepped outside of her comfort zone, she had almost died. Still, wasn't this why she had come all this way?

"I need to be the one to finish this," she said at last. "It's my duty. If I can help him, I will. At least let me try."

Cross shrugged as if it didn't matter, but Amari could hear the approval in her voice. "So be it. First thing tomorrow. Today, we'll prepare. You can explore the vault. I'll spend the day extracting what I can from these terminals so you don't go in half-cocked. Tonight, I'll brief you on what I learn."

o - o - o - o - o

The haunting 'otherness' that had dogged her in the beginning faded in time, dampened by the peace and comfort that cushioned her life. She was and always had been Mary Smith, beloved daughter and only child of Dick and Jane Smith. She _was_ rather bored, even with Suzie's somewhat neurotic company, but her life was otherwise happy in the cloudless summer that never ended. In any case, she had nothing to compare it to. Life had always been and always would be the same on Tranquility Lane.

The barest memory of her dreams made it easier to accept the bromides she was offered. In the corners of her unconscious mind, she was hungry, cold, sick, and alone. No matter how far she ran, hungry jaws gaped to swallow her up. No one loved her. She was never safe. Every night, she woke up sobbing without knowing why. Sometimes, her mother would come to her, hold her hand, and sing to her until the shadow of terror had passed; other times she bore it alone, clenching her teeth against the urge to cry out. The morning, when it dawned, was unfailingly sweet and golden and swept her doubts and fears away. The rituals of her life, while not exciting, gave her a role to play that she embraced: the beloved daughter of good parents.

"Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four… can you count with me, love?" Mama's hands were gentle and quick as they smoothed Mary's long, black hair, a glossy curtain that fell past her shoulders. Every morning, she would brush it - a hundred times exactly - and braid it for her.

Mary counted the strokes obediently for a moment. "Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven… I _know_ how to count. I'm not a baby."

"Of course not, dear." Still, Mama counted under her breath, almost too quietly to hear, until it shone in the light from the window. "Ninety-nine, one-hundred. All done! What color ribbon would you like today?"

"Pink, I guess." She sat and looked at herself in the mirror, trying not to fidget, kicking scuffed Oxfords against the rungs of the stool. "Mama, I have nothing to do."

Mama caught her eye in the reflection and smiled. "Don't say that or I'll have you hoover the carpets! Why don't you go see if Betty wants to play?"

Mary shivered at the suggestion. "I don't like her. She's mean. She stomped a bird for no reason. She made Timmy Neusbaum cry." Truth be told, she was afraid of the little girl who lived on the corner, and hated the inevitable playdates forced upon her. Her house was dark and felt cold and empty. Betty's parents were too quiet, their eyes empty if you looked directly at them. Like paper dolls, they shuffled around the house like mobile props. They seemed wholly irrelevant to Betty's malignant and vibrant existence.

"I'm sure it was an accident," Mama said absolutely. Her gentle fingers wove the three stands together quickly, then held the glossy plait out for inspection. "All good. Run along and play now. Lunch is at noon."

"Yes, Mama."

A strange request caught her at the doorway. "Wait a second, Mary."

"What is it?"

Mama's voice became curiously forced as she stared at a spot well over Mary's head. "I'm supposed to give you a message: twenty-three. Do you understand it?"

o - o - o - o - o

Cross fixed her with a serious look and Amari knew she was about to be briefed with all of the severity the old battle ax could muster. She swallowed her last bite of hard-baked biscuit and tried to look attentive.

"Tomorrow morning, you will enter the remaining pod, where you'll remain for exactly one day. We have no idea what will happen to you: your body will experience twenty-four hours of physical deprivation as we will _not_ couple you to the life-support for safety reasons; your mind may perceive that time as much more or much less.

"Stanislaus Braun, one of the minds behind the G.E.C.K., was the creator and overseer of this vault. He still lives, but we have no idea what remains of his mind or the others'. Extant history does not say what kind of person he was, only that he exercised his brilliance in multiple disciplines.

"This vault was intended to preserve the lives of a few in perpetuity. It appears to have succeeded in that object… though, at what cost, I won't venture to say. Disrupting the self-contained system is a morally-questionable act, but it is one I will accept responsibility for. If we can extract James without damaging the others, the mission will be a complete success.

"If you can, seek out Braun. He may yet be a rational man."

o - o - o - o - o

Tranquility Lane was no longer the home of her childhood. Between her childhood and now, something had been lost, flaking away in small pieces, the process almost imperceptible at the time, but cumulative in its effect. Suzie was now a fading memory and most of the houses stood abandoned, as their neighbors had, one by one, sought out greener pastures. And no wonder. The grass grew yellow and brittle now, leaving wide bare patches that not even the weeds could touch. Even the sun had a sickly, jaundiced cast to it and the air itself tasted smoky and stale.

The flag was up on the Smith mailbox, though she'd neither seen nor heard the postman. Couldn't ever remember seeing him, actually. Listlessly, Mary left the shade of her porch to collect its offering: a single postcard that read nothing more than a '12', stamped in black where a message ought to have been. Disappointed, she let it fall to the gutter to join the other trash. Another number that meant nothing, random punctuation in her dreary life. She couldn't lose the sneaking suspicion that it _should_ mean something, but she couldn't think what.

The house was dark. What lights still worked were off and her mother lay like a broken doll on the davenport, her face stiff and expressionless. Mary turned a lamp on and tried, once more, to break through the wall.

"Mom, where's dad?"

"Who?" This was a syllable without any soul behind it. Mary had come to expect nothing more from her only remaining parent.

"Dad. My father. The guy you're married to. Who lives here. The guy we haven't seen for… I don't remember how long." _Ever since someone tacked the number '17' to our door, she supplied silently._ He'd been gone so long that it was an effort to remember him. When she tried, she could recall his face: cold, angry, and lined with premature wrinkles. There were no happy memories left, but he _was_ her father. Even if she couldn't remember his first name. She believed it had started with an 'A'.

Her mother didn't answer - she rarely did any more - and Mary felt too apathetic to press the question.

"I'll make dinner," she announced, as if there was any other option. Without Mary, her mother would starve. Tonight, they'd eat warmed over canned soup and processed cheese sandwiches. There seemed to be no other food available. Not that it mattered; none of it had any taste at all.

She went up to her room, finding her way by memory through the house. It wasn't night yet - the sun outside was shining for all its worth, for what little _that_ meant - but there were no windows left. She kicked off her shoes at the door, thinking she'd take a nap. The only problem was that there was already someone on the bed.

She sighed and took her desk chair instead. "I'm not in the mood for this, Betty."

"That's just too bad. I'm here now."

Three foot six and wearing a perfectly-pressed pink dress, the little girl hadn't changed in thirteen years. Eighteen now, Mary could have picked her up and carried her out of the house, dumping her on the porch and slamming the door. She could never quite bring herself to do it, though. Something about that smile - and how it never touched her eyes - chilled her. Besides, she remembered what Betty had done to the dog. Had made _them_ do.

"What do you want?"

Betty kicked her feet, her black-soled shoes leaving marks on the white coverlet. "You're not going to stay here forever, are you? There's so little left. Just me and you."

" _And_ my mother. I have to take care of her." She did, too. The gentle, caring woman of her childhood had faded until there was almost nothing left. Sometimes, Mary imagined she could see straight through her, as if she shared the house with a depressing ghost.

Cold eyes held hers. "What if she were gone?" Coming from Betty, this was a threat. Mary tried to keep her voice level.

"I don't know." Tranquility Lane was her whole universe. She'd never been past the corner at the end of the block. She'd tried, once, when she was much younger. Old lady Dithers had screamed in real terror, rushed at her, and grabbed her arm so hard it hurt. Since then, there had been an invisible barrier in her mind; the next row of houses, just one cross street away, might as well have been on the other side of an impassable river. "Where would I go?"

"Take the bus, silly. It passes the stop at the corner every evening. You could go tonight, if you wanted. All the way to the end of the line. Far away from here."

"There's no stop and no-" She choked on her words as the memory fell on her like a bag of sand. After all, there _was_ a bus. She'd seen it every day of her life. It never slowed down, but there'd never been anyone waiting for it either. She swallowed a fleeting wave of confusion as she caught up with reality. Betty always made her feel _wrong_ , like the air between them thickened when she spoke. "It doesn't matter," she said at last. "My mother can't live alone."

o - o - o - o - o

"We'll give you one full day, though it may seem much longer. We'll have no way of knowing what you're seeing or hearing, but one of us will monitor you constantly." Cross seemed nervous, which was so unusual that it made Amari nervous; at any rate, she was repeating herself, which was unusual for the efficient woman. Her capable hands double-checked the sensors on the specialized vault suit she'd taken from a robot's deathgrip. Bulky with electronics, it was heavier than any set of clothing Amari had ever worn and she was glad she wouldn't be walking far in it.

Cross gave her one last pep talk, mostly repeating information she'd already gone over. Amari listened with half an ear.

"Right, so there's no telling how much of your current identity you'll keep on the inside. A weak, untested mind like yours could easily default to an unpredictable dream state. Try to keep your name, if you can't keep anything else. Hopefully, you'll know your mission if you see it."

Ignoring the slight, Amari was thinking. "Can I take a message of some sort with me?" she asked suddenly. "As a reminder. Something to hold onto."

Cross stared at her. "I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. No, no I won't. You can't _carry_ anything in there. I would have hoped that'd be obvious."

Amari rolled her eyes. Sometimes Cross was so patronizing as to be dense. "I just mean some kind of verbal grounding device. Not my lucky hat or anything. Something that might mean something to me."

"Actually… yes. Something I thought of last night" She jammed a finger at the digital clock on the display. "I'll call out the hours to you, counting down from twenty-four. You may not understand it - especially not at first - but you might be susceptible to external stimuli on a subconscious level. At least that's what that nutty little scribe studying hypnopaedia told me." She shrugged. "Mind you, this was the same scribe who thought telepathy was the next great step in human evolution. Brilliant, but not entirely down-to-earth." She shook her head.

"Even so, it might help," she concluded, helping Amari to climb into the pod. "Pay attention to any numbers you hear. Got that? _Numbers_. Don't let this be a waste of time."

o - o - o - o - o

Despite Suzie's whispered warnings, it wasn't until the incident with the dog that Mary realized just how dangerous Betty was. What she did - what they _all_ did - to the dog was a wake-up call. Mary was nine years old before she realized that Betty even _had_ a dog. The poor thing must have been locked up in that terrible house all that time.

When Betty led it out to the playground, all of the children - all four of them that were left at that point, anyway - gathered reluctantly around her: Mary herself, Timmy, his pale face pinched with worry, Suzie, who even then seemed to be fading away a little more every day, and Kevin, a small, mute child with less personality than a doorstop. When Betty wanted an audience, she got an audience.

The animal, a German shepherd, was far too thin for its size, but it still had the happy look of a dog that saw a friend in everybody: tongue lolling out, big brush of a tail sweeping the grass. Mary's hands itched to pet him, to lead him away from Betty and whatever nasty thing she had in store.

Slowly, almost tenderly, Betsy reached down and unhooked the leash from his collar, winding it around her wrist. The dog sat down on his haunches and looked expectantly at the small circle of children.

"Alright, boys and girls, this is… well, let's say his name is Spot. Spot's been a very bad boy. I don't want him anymore. I don't even want to _see_ him anymore. It's time for him to leave."

 _I want him_ , Mary thought. _A dog - a big, friendly dog - that would curl up on my floor, play with me, listen to me... that could make the long, boring days less empty. Give him to me._ She said none of this. All she managed was a weak, almost inaudible, protest: "Why?"

" _Because that's what I want, Mary_. I would have thought that'd be obvious by now, even to you." Betty continued, addressing them all. " _You'll_ make him leave, not me. I won't soil my hands with such things."

The wilted grass surrounding the jungle gym was littered with smooth, round river rocks, each the size of a ripe, red apple. The area had been a smooth carpet before. Mary was almost certain. She looked down and realized that there was one resting in her own hand. A perfect fit.

To her right, Timmy was crying; to her left, Suzie's face was set, resigned. Both held stones of their own. Kevin stood immobile, arms at his side, staring forward like a puppet whose master had gotten distracted and walked away. In the silence before Betty spoke again, Mary thought she heard the broken puppet whisper something to her: _twenty_. She wasn't even sure that his lips had moved, not that it mattered _._ What mattered was whatever cruel drama Betty was about to enact.

" _Stay_ , boy." She stepped away from the dog, and crossed her arms, facing them all. "Throw."

Suzie didn't hesitate. Her stone hit Spot in the ribs, making him yelp in surprised pain. Timmy's first throw missed, but the second glanced off of the furry head. They continued the assault, stooping for more ammunition, driving the animal down, where it endured the barrage that never stopped. Mary grabbed Suzie by the arm, but her friend shook her off and continued. She was also crying by now.

Betty's voice broke into her shock. "Do it, Mary. Throw it. _I won't let him move until you do_."

Mary couldn't. Not until she looked Spot in the face. One eye was already damaged beyond repair. The remaining one was intelligent, pleading, fixed on her. She threw the rock in a feeble parabola that came down on the animal's back. She hated herself as soon as it escaped her grip.

The others stopped at once, looking at her. The look that Timmy gave her was thankful, Suzie's reproachful. She hissed under her breath, " _That_ mattered enough to fight, Mary."

The blonde girl threw her last rock angrily, as hard as she could, at the nearest house where it bounced off the clapboard siding. Without another word she left the circle, shuffling slowly toward her home.

"Get out of here, Spot," said Betty disdainfully. As if let off an invisible chain, the dog staggered to its feet and ran, limping, to the corner at the end of the street and disappeared. The little girl advanced on Mary, reached up to grab her face, and made her stoop to a five-year-old's level: "You're no better than them, you know. In the end, you'll march to my tune, lock-step." She released her, turned her back, and walked away. "It's a pity. I get my first new blood in two hundred years and the one's too insufferable, the other too malleable. _Spot_ has more potential than you do, Mary. He just has to suffer first."

o - o - o - o - o

"Be careful," Richard told her before he closed the lid. He'd said little all morning and she couldn't read any concern in his voice or on his face. Wishful thinking said it was there all the same. "Even humans can be reprogrammed. This isn't too unlike the technology that changed me."

She tried to smile. "Don't worry. I know who I am."

"I hope you do."

As the lid came down and she found herself drawn into a blue-streaked vortex, she grasped at what she had to remember. _Numbers. Those are important. Also my name. Yes, my name. Marilyn. Mari. Amata. Amari. One of those. I'll hold onto it._

o - o - o - o - o

When Mary went downstairs after a nap that left her more tired than before, the living room was empty. A mug of tea still lay on the end table where she had left it that morning, untouched and stone cold.

Quashing the fear that rose in her throat, she walked slowly to her mother's room, down the hallway past the kitchen. The door swung open at her knock. Somehow, she wasn't surprised to find it empty, completely unlived in, with yellowed dust cloths thrown over a bare queen mattress.

Someone cleared their throat in the shadows behind her. Betty tapped her foot impatiently, the patent leather noiseless on the carpet.

"Are you ready to take the bus _now_?"

o - o - o - o - o

Sample question from the G.O.A.T. Exam, 16th ed. (first administered 15 October 2274)

"You wake up one morning to find the vault empty. You find no one in their quarters, in the common areas, or in their workplaces. What do you do?"

A) Kill yourself.

B) Break the seal on the door and leave the Vault.

C) Take on the responsibility of Overseer for the Vault's last generation.

D) Go back to sleep.

o - o - o - o - o

Eggs. Sausages. Pancakes. Coffee. Soup. Sandwiches. Stale pie. None of it good, none of it even particularly _hot_ , not even the coffee, but she served it anyway, feeding an endless procession of faceless customers, a never-ending circle from the kitchen to the front. If they tipped her, she gave them a smile with their last warm-up, but it felt stiff and uncomfortable on her face.

Her path ended at the door, at the grimy plate-glass that separated the dingy interior from the dingy exterior. There _was_ a world out there, a second-rate seaside town eternally stuck in the off-season, but Mary had no interest in seeing it. No time, either. Day and night, she carried trays, refilled drinks, and bussed tables. It was a job, the first she'd applied for when she stepped off the bus. It was freedom from Tranquility Lane and from Betty, and she couldn't afford to lose it.

Every hour, she was allowed a five-minute break, just out the back door by the dumpster. It was always sprinkling, the gray sky overhead oppressive, the smell of coffee grounds and spoiled vegetables overpowering. She could see a rocky beach from where she stood, but it was as uninviting as the rest of the world: the smell of rotten fish and an unpleasant brininess would have been enough to keep her away by themselves. With nothing to hold her there, she seldom stayed the full five minutes.

All that changed the day the dog showed up.

She almost didn't recognize him. It had been more than a decade, after all. But that empty eye - Suzie or Timmy's reluctant work - marked him. He was old, gray, and gaunt, hair matted with the filth of the streets, but just as happy, just as eager to be her friend.

"Hey Spot. Hey boy," she said weakly, wiping greasy fingers on her apron and holding a hand out to him. "What're you doing here?"

He whined and pressed his cold nose into her palm. Automatically, she petted him, like she'd wanted to when she was a child. The bones that stuck out under his skin told her how hungry he was.

"I'll bring you something boy," whispered. "Wait here. I'll be back."

The cook's bellowing voice from inside cut her off. "That's five minutes, Mary. Get in here. You got customers."

She stroked him one last time. "I'll be back soon," she promised again. "Don't leave."

Obediently, he lay down like a sphinx, alert and trusting, watching her with his one eye as she retreated reluctantly into the stifling, steamy kitchen.

A promise was all well and good, but that hour never ended. From the time she took the orders to the moment she dropped off the check, the minute hand on the clock didn't budge. Purloined biscuits and sausage grew cold and stale in her pockets, and she imagined Spot leaving, hungry and disappointed. She moved faster, as if that could make the time pass, but it didn't matter: the door never stopped opening, the grey light outside never changed, and the cook never yelled at her, "Mary, take your break!"

" _How are you today? Good, good."_

" _What would you like to eat? And your drink?"_

" _Here's your short stack, two eggs over-easy. I'll leave the pot. Take your… time."_

For the first time in all the time she'd worked at the diner, her feet and back hurt. The new breed of customers were a more impatient sort, the kind who would take the waitress to task over the cook's lousy offerings, the kind who hollered her over for more butter or syrup or ketchup every two minutes. The dining room grew until there were fifty tables or more, all clamoring for their food.

The soles of her shoes were worn to the thinnest cardboard, her apron was filthy with years of spilled coffee, and she imagined that _she_ was wearing out too: soon there'd be nothing left but a machine built to take orders, serve food, and clear away dishes. If she closed her eyes, it didn't matter: her body went through the motions like it wasn't even hers.

"Number two up, Mary! Shake a leg."

She was on her way to collect the order when a dim sense of recognition crept into her head. Numbers. Numbers _mattered_. A lot more than this job, actually. In that moment of distraction, she tripped over someone's outstretched leg and dropped her tray for the first time. The unexpected noise and mess brought her a moment of clarity. It was the first she'd had in years.

 _I give in. I quit_.

The thought came from nowhere, but once it was there, she held onto it, slowed down, and stopped, ignoring the calls that beat against her ears. She stood in the middle of the restaurant, stooped and beaten, her pockets stuffed with food that had long since crumbled to dust and tips she could never spend. Then, as if a door had slammed shut on the bustle of irritable, nameless strangers, the noise cut off.

 _I'll take my break now_ , she decided. _Permission or no._ She'd taken two steps toward the back door when a familiar voice roped her in.

"It took you long enough. No one else lasted nearly as long on that difficulty level. Of course, I'd worn them down for a long time before I designed this scenario."

Mary couldn't help it. She stopped and turned.

The room was empty except for the little girl who would never grow up, who was still bright and pink against the gray sameness of the world. Once, Mary had believed herself to be taller and stronger than her pintsized enemy; now, she didn't even have the strength to lift a finger in defiance.

"Betty. I'd like to leave now. Please." It came out as a plea.

She chuckled knowingly, a strange sound coming from a child. "Of course you would, my dear. Of course. The door is there. It's always been there. Take your break. Enjoy your reunion. I'll think of something else."

Mary stumbled outside, the humidity taking her breath away. She forced her legs to take her around to the back of the restaurant. There, beside the dumpster, was Spot, skinnier than ever, with patches of hair missing, but delighted to see her.

"I'm sorry. I didn't know I could leave. I couldn't bring you anything."

She fell to her knees and hugged him. He'd shrunk so much that she thought she could have carried him now. But she didn't have to. He climbed stiffly to his feet and leaned against her leg, warm and comforting.

"I think I'm old now, Spot. I _feel_ old. Can we leave together?"

The beach was hard and gravelly, with broken shells and glass that cut their feet, but they kept going, looking for new horizons that never came. No matter how far they walked, the diner was never more than a stone's throw away.

"There's a rowboat over there," she said wearily. And, sure enough, there it was. It had been there a long time from the looks of it; the wood was gray and warped, and a sane person wouldn't have trusted it to the ocean at all. A faded red '1', slapped on with a clumsy brush, was its only visible marking. "Shall we?"

It leaked, badly. The splintery oars hurt her hands and strained her shrunken arms. It was hard to push past the oncoming waves. It didn't matter. What mattered was getting as far away as possible from the trap she'd fallen into. That they'd _both_ fallen into.

"Hold on, boy. We're getting out of here."

The shore receded from sight and she rejoiced, but the water was already up to her ankles. The heretofore changeless sky grew dark and threatening and a cold wind whipped stinging raindrops onto her cheeks.

"We're going to die out here, Spot. But it's better than being _there_ , isn't it?"

Apparently, she couldn't even do that right. When the storm struck, the boat capsized almost immediately. She clung automatically to an oar and looked frantically for the dog. He was paddling gamely toward her, and she smiled through a mouthful of seawater, but that was the last thing she saw before something hard hit her in the head.

o - o - o - o - o

Lying on a rough, wet surface, she felt Spot dragging her further up the beach and pushing her with his nose until she lay on her side. She watched him through half-closed eyes, unable to move or do anything but cough on seawater and shiver from the cold. "G-g-ood b-boy. G-good d-doggie. Th-thanks. I'm sorry I couldn't do better."

He whined and licked her cheek before curling up beside her. She threw an arm around his wet ruff and tried to warm her numb digits in his matted fire. She noticed for the first time that he still wore his old collar, though the leather was worn and weathered now and it hung very loosely around his neck. A tag hung there, empty of any identifying information. On the back of the tarnished disk, however, there was something unexpected: 00:00:01:01.

"We're running out of time, Spot," she murmured. "I don't think we've done enough to make it. But don't worry. I've got you, boy. Don't worry. I'll never let you go again."

As if in answer, someone, somewhere, said, in an unearthly voice that reverberated through her head and set her teeth on edge. " _Time's up._ "

It was at that moment that the dark colors and grating textures of the world drained away, like a dream that fades upon waking. Gone were the rocks beneath her, the smell of dog breath, and the feel of wet fur on her skin. She thought she heard a pained whimper, but then it was gone. She was desperately thirsty and confused, and loud voices clashed against each other above her head. Glaring lights on the ceiling hurt her eyes.

"You should have brought her out sooner. This was too long."

"We _agreed_ on this. Her vitals never dipped below acceptable parameters. Some disorientation is to be expected."

"Just _look_ at her. She doesn't even know where she is."

Mary blinked. She had trouble focusing on the the speakers, a man and a woman. There was something very important she needed to ask them. "Is my dog alright? He was with me, before. I need to make sure he's okay. I just found him."

The woman stepped close enough that Mary could see her frown. "Your dog?"

"Yeah. His name is Spot. He saved me from drowning." She half sat-up to look around. It was a strange sort of hospital she found herself in. No beds, only pod-like chambers, including the one she herself was in. And the people standing by were dressed in some very odd clothes indeed.

The man crossed his arms and spoke flatly to the woman. "Do you still think twenty-four hours was safe?"

Mary's eyes fell on the device on her wrist then, and a swirling mix of memories resolved into two, distinct lives, one of which was - probably - real. _The vault_. This was followed by a flood of half-composed images, memories, and associations, many of them unpleasant. When this slowed to a trickle, she lay back into the pod, aware for the first time that she was soaked with a sour-smelling sweat. "Turn it back on. I had him. We were getting better at escaping Betty. No, _Braun_ , I think. I need more time."

"More time to rescue your dog?" the woman asked skeptically, not moving.

She swung her legs over the edge of the pod, blinking against the headrush the movement caused. "Don't be stupid. James. Marilyn's dad. Obviously it was him. He was the realest and most normal of all of them, for all that he was a _dog_. We had almost gotten away. Put me back. Maybe I can pick up where I left off."

"Absolutely not," the woman told her. "You need rest. I won't stand by and let you sacrifice your health and sanity, not even to save my old friend. It'd be irresponsible. Immoral. That's not what we do. Not what _I_ do."

"I've done nothing _but_ rest for I-don't-know-how-long," she protested. "Look, you don't know what it was like in there. I need to finish what I started. I was close."

"I seriously doubt that."

The man cut in. "Answer three questions - without hesitating - and I'll allow you another eight hours on the inside, whatever _she_ says. Otherwise, you'll eat, drink, and get some non-simulated sleep. What's my name? What's her name? What's your name?"

"I'm Mary..." she began indignantly, then stopped, horrified because that wasn't quite right, but she couldn't think of what it should be.

"I'm Richard. The haughty woman is Cross." The big man offered a hand to help her climb down. " _You_ are Amari. Time for a break."

An hour later, a blanket wrapped around her against the chill inside of her, Amari stared into the weak flame of the cookstove, still trying to untangle the dream from reality. Cross nudged her with a bowl of soup, which she accepted automatically, but held it in her lap without tasting it.

The older woman sat down across from her and sighed. "The synth is right. That did a number on you, didn't it? I shouldn't have let you do it."

"It was a nightmare, but it was also _interesting_ , at least in retrospect. Betty could manipulate the world around me, even make me remember things that never happened." That power appealed to her, even as she was appalled by what it had done. "She couldn't completely control me, though. Sure, I threw a rock at Sp- ... _James_ , but I had free will within constraints. The constraints being my own sense of what was right. She couldn't take that away from me. I didn't abandon my mother. I _eventually_ quit my job."

Cross looked unimpressed. "Uh-huh. That's great. Eat your soup."

Amari tried to obey. It tasted like the canned condensed soup she'd eaten every day at Tranquility Lane and smelled like the watery chicken noodles she'd served for countless years, even though it was clearly Cross's dried field rations with bits of desiccated meat and vegetables floating in it.

A frightful thought occurred to her and she set her spoon down. "Suzie. Timmy. They were real people, weren't they? I know not everybody was - all of the people at the diner were too blank to be real - but those two were the genuine article."

"Yes," Cross said soberly. "Susan Rockwell and Timothy Neusbaum _are_ real people. Children who entered this vault with their parents two hundred years ago. I suppose this looked like a better option for those people than gambling against the odds of survival. Who knows how long it's actually been for them, subjectively speaking."

"We have to save them. All of them." Cross opened her mouth to say something, but Amari anticipated her thought. "Yes, I _know_ they're as good as dead, but we can't leave them to Braun, no matter what happens. Unplug them, unplug _Braun_ , do _something_. They're suffering."

"We won't unplug Braun until James is safe," Cross said firmly. "A man like that wouldn't have abandoned his body without one, last, spiteful trap. But don't worry; we won't leave them at Braun's mercy. This vault's experiment will end soon, one way or another."

Amari was finding it harder to stay awake. She set the bowl aside and fumbled for a nearby bundle to rest on. "My 'parents', too. My pretend parents. Dick and Jane Smith. Stupid names, nice people. Braun took them away from me, piece by piece. I can't let them stay in there."

Surprisingly gentle, Cross's voice floated above her as the weight of another blanket enveloped her. "Sorry. There's no one by either name on the manifest. They probably weren't real. A mind that can manipulate a simulation to the extent you describe can create _anything_ , even convincing people. Braun could have made a paradise - and maybe he did, once - but that wasn't enough for him." There was a pause. Amari was drifting off to sleep when Cross spoke again.

"You can try again. Soon."


	16. Wonderland

_**AN: Sorry for the slow updates. I could spit out a page or two of excuses, but let's just leave it at "Sorry for the slow updates." I'll try to do better going forward, though that's contingent upon the stars aligning properly.**_

 _ **Anyway, for this chapter, I'm providing a content warning for brutal violence involving a "child." I've been avoiding writing this scene for literally months and, if it seems too abrupt, it's because I found writing it too disturbing to invest a lot of time in.**_

o - o - o - o - o

 _I wonder if Richard likes long walks on the beach?_

Amari smiled at her little joke - if you could call it that and not the faltering stutter of a mind pushed past its breaking point. She sobered quickly. From the moment she'd returned to this universe, it had wrestled her for control, dashing old nightmares into her face like cold water, shaping her and dressing her as it saw fit. Any distraction was dangerous, and fantasizing ever more so: unseen forces pressured her to abandon both her name and her quest. If she thought too much about what could be, she might forget what _was_. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to come back from that.

Freshly cleaned and starched and just a little too short for her tastes, the waitress uniform had _almost_ pulled Amari back into Mary's strange, suffocated world, the prison where she'd already served a life sentence. This time, however, she fought back, clawing for an identity - any identity - that she could call her own. Some repressed part of her conjured up a vault suit to replace the hated uniform; it wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind, but it _was_ better, or at least familiar.

Braun would have laid traps for her. It was his _modus operandi_ , Amari decided, to study her as a insect-collector might examine a specimen he was chloroforming. All the same, she _was_ more prepared this time around. Yes, he was toying with her; yes, he had the upper hand... but she wouldn't go gently this time. She could muster only small rebellions, like her choice in clothing, but it would, she hoped, be enough to make him sit up and take notice. Enough to earn her the dubious honor of a face-to-face meeting.

Despite her many apprehensions, she strolled with deliberate nonchalance along the beach that had unspooled hastily at her arrival, an unimaginative stretch of gravel that looped every so often, with the result that she'd passed the same ugly pile of seaweed three times already. She looked neither to the left nor to the right, worrying about Spot ( _James, his name is James_ , she reminded herself), and uncomfortably aware of the attention that had been laser-focused on her from the moment she'd returned.

Amari set her restless mind upon the people who had stepped in and out of her new life. She held their faces in her mind for a moment before letting them go. Simms. Moriarty. Moira. Deacon. Richard. Penny. Three Dog. The boy, Arthur. Cross. She'd found allies and enemies, watched some of them die, and left others behind forever. The fleeting nature of these encounters would have left poor, stupid Amata reeling, but Amari could accept these comings and goings as a matter of course. She'd never known anything else.

 _I'm afraid_ , she admitted to herself when she was out of names to remember. She wondered if Braun could hear her thoughts. It seemed quite likely. _I have only myself to blame. I volunteered for this._

Like a mother hen with one chick, Cross had fussed over her, giving her general parameters for this second foray. She had finally dropped the pretense that Amari was a soldier under her command and acknowledged her as a civilian with less field experience than the greenest initiate.

 _He's got every advantage over you. He's had millennia to prepare, for one. He's many times more intelligent_ (sorry honey, but it's true) _. He's the god of his tiny universe. All you've got is unpredictability and possibly knowledge that he wants to get out of you. Depending on how much James told him, he may not know how much the world has changed and curiosity may keep him talking._

 _Most importantly, he's cornered. Your disappearance and return tells him that you have backup. He's an animal in a trap and dangerous for it. Are you_ _sure_ _you want to do this?_

 _Don't die, girl. I'd never forgive myself._

Far less emotive and characteristically succinct, Richard hadn't added anything to this except, "This is a bad idea," a sentiment that Amari agreed with wholeheartedly. Nevertheless, this was what she had to do to kill off Amata altogether. She might have felt guilty, except… Amata would have agreed. She would have chosen Amari or Marilyn over herself, or so Amari believed. It was becoming difficult to remember Almodovar's daughter. Telling James the truth would be the last thing Amata did as far as Amari was concerned. It wasn't _murder_ ; it was more like surgically removing a vestigial limb.

First, however, she and James would have to survive the rescue attempt. Everything depended upon Braun's willingness to play the game properly.

She didn't _want_ to rise to his bait, but when the diner materialized on the rise above the shore, Amari had long since grown impatient enough to take it. The alternative was a virtual eternity of virtual monotony and she had no doubt that Braun was more patient than she. Passing the familiar back door by the dumpsters, she wasn't particularly surprised to see an old friend. Dressed as a waitress, a worn, middle-aged version of Suzie was pacing nervously on thin-soled shoes and smoking a cigarette. She didn't bother with a greeting.

"Do what he wants and end this, Mary. He's been running this simulation for years since you left. You _think_ you know what it's like, but you haven't been doing this for centuries." The older woman ground her cigarette into the ground defiantly and stared out over the lead-gray sea. "I wish you and your father had never come. For the most part, he had been leaving us to our own devices. He'd even given me a little bit of control, if only so he wouldn't be bothered with the petty details. You disturbed our equilibrium and we're the ones who've paid for it."

 _Your father_ provoked a fresh stab of uneasy guilt. "I'm working on it, Suzie. I have friends on the outside. They… _we_ … aren't going to move on until this is over." Amari swallowed. "If you had a choice - if Braun were out of the picture - would you live on in this simulation or… um, not? It's been two hundred years since the War. Your body is beyond saving. Your whole family..." She trailed off. The anguished look on Suzie's face told her she'd been too blunt; she might have known all of that, but hearing it spoken aloud was another thing altogether.

"Kill Braun first, then I'll decide," Suzie said harshly. "You aren't the first to try to get the upper hand on him. Go on. He's waiting inside for you." When Amari turned to go, Suzie reached out and grabbed her shoulder with a painfully strong grip, whispering foul-smelling words into her ear. "Remember this if you get close. He chooses to limit himself to his current form. He's been Betsy for a long time, God knows why, and he might have forgotten his stronger shapes. That could be useful." She lowered her voice ever further. "He's killed in the past by lifting the safeguards that keep us from dying for a minute or two. In those moments... I think he's vulnerable too. The bastard may not believe he can be hurt, but I think he's grown complacent."

Amari pushed her way into the diner and wasn't surprised to find it empty except for a familiar little girl and Old Lady Dithers standing frozen like a statue beside the nearest booth, holding a pad and pen. Through the window behind the counter, Amari could see poor Mr. Neusbaum waiting for a sign, a white apron stretched over his belly and a spatula in his hand. Two reluctant props in a play that might never resume.

Amari took a seat across from Braun. "Let them go. This is between you and me. Aren't you bored with all this by now? And where is James?"

"You're impudent for an intruder. James was the same way, at first, before I shut his mouth. You _are_ his daughter, I presume? You must be. There is a passing similarity between you two."

Braun no longer sounded like the child he appeared to be and this was actually a relief. His was a haughty male voice, contemptuous and self-important, wrapped in an accent Amari didn't recognize. She said nothing to his speculations, letting him assume what he would. James was around somewhere, and she didn't want to muddy the waters just now.

She drew herself up and tried to match her enemy's tone. "I represent what passes for authority and justice in this day and age. I'm here to tell you that your experiment is over. You know by now, of course, that the security of this vault is entirely compromised. James came alone for his own purposes. I did not. I have come to present you with an ultimatum: release them or die."

"Should you not bargain for your own life as well?" His smile was a particularly nasty one. "Before I give you my answer, let me show you a part of what I've learned."

o - o - o - o - o

Without any obvious effort, he whisked them both back to Paradise, the home that now seemed more real than the hole she'd been born in. Two boys in overalls knelt over a marbles game on the street, the lopsided chalk circle smudged by their knees. Suzie skipped rope on the sidewalk, keeping perfect time to her sing-song chant. Another familiar face - Timmy Neusbaum, once again six years old and wearing his old ball cap - played catch with his father in the side yard. Mothers clothed in aprons hung laundry over velvety lawns, the lush grass marred only by the hole that Spot was digging for his bone. Somewhere not too far away, a calliope played its tinkling tune and a lovely, distant aroma promised hot dogs, popcorn, and cotton candy to end a perfect day. Here was mid-century Americana, sucked directly out of someone's nostalgic dream. Amari hated the lie but loved the beauty.

"This is the way it was in the beginning." Braun sounded almost wistful as he said this, but there was no genuine regret on his features. "The way we always wished it was before. This is what the nation's leaders told its citizens they were fighting for. It is almost worth dying for, yes?"

It was hard to see the monster when it was squeezed into an innocent shape and harder still when that shape so perfectly fit the setting. He wore a poodle skirt here, colored the usual bubblegum pink that Betsy preferred. Walking beside him, Amari had to slow her steps to keep to a five-year-old's pace. She had somehow managed to keep her true age, more or less, but Tranquility Lane had pulled her back into Mary's body and what Mary knew to be a fashionable swing dress.

"So you got bored," Amari said matter-of-factly. "Without condoning any of… this, I can't say I don't understand. Two hundred years is a long time. I can't imagine how much time you've actually spent here. Anyone would go insane."

"Not I," Braun retorted. "You misunderstand. It was _them_. Well before the end of that first year - less than a _month_ into the experiment - they began to complain. Life was too easy. The sun was too bright. The dogs never bit and the ants never stung. They had everything they needed to be happy and they rejected it. I offered them the Promised Land and they demanded the desert."

"So, what, you sent a thunderstorm their way and everything else followed from that?" she shot back sarcastically. "It's a long way from a bit of rain to torture." She realized to her horror that every person on the block was crying through frozen smiles, that muscles were straining impotently against the strings that put them through their paces. Her hands itched to grab the fragile neck and _squeeze_ , but she buried her fists in her skirt and willed herself to bide her time. _Not yet_ , she told herself. _Wait for the moment. If Suzie is right, he_ has _to drop the safety protocols before he can kill me. That's when I'll kill_ him _._

"You jest, but you are correct. It became too hard to calibrate the _exact_ level of misery needed to optimize human happiness. I found it easier to maximize it, to test the upward limits of human endurance." He paused. "To be perfectly honest, it was also more fun."

Amari found she had a headache despite not having a real head here. Too much time in the simulation, perhaps? She still had no plan for wresting control of the situation from Braun, not when he had complete control of the world around them. _Keep him talking_ , she told herself.

"Why are you showing me all of this?" she asked after a long moment of silence.

"The experiment ends today. An old scientist needed to report his results to _someone_. With that dispensed of, I can die and all of my subjects with me." Rosebud lips curling into a beatific smile. "You will accompany me and them on the proverbial pyre. As certain among my former colleagues learned to their ruin, I am not above spiteful revenge and you and you father have ended my life. _That_ is my answer to your masters' 'ultimatum.' Will you join me for dinner?"

It took Amari a long moment to realize she'd been offered an invitation and even longer to realize they were back in the diner, a dismal shock after the vibrancy they'd left behind. She took one last look around the room she'd spent eons haunting. Ms. Dithers was still frozen beside their table, waiting patiently for them to order lousy soup or a lousy sandwich.

Amari faced Braun defiantly, muscles tensed to fight barehanded if it came to it. "I'd rather die now than eat here."

He clapped little hands with glee. "Not _here_. I can do better than _this_. Prepared to be fêted."

o - o - o - o - o

Braun was as good as his word and more. Amari supposed that places like this one had once existed, but she knew they never would again. Lights, yellow and pure and bright, hung suspended from an impossibly high ceiling, mounted upon elegant complications of gold that draped downwards like tree branches.

 _Chandeliers_ , thought Amari doubtfully, stumbling over the never-before-used word. _What else could they be?_

There were other diners fading into the background, a faceless, well-dressed multitude whose murmurs rose and fell soothingly like a distant ocean. Amari knew them to be as lifeless as the heavy red drapings on the wall. Braun had proven himself capable of creating convincing people, but he obviously hadn't bothered here. She wondered inconsequentially if he had drawn this place from a real memory of his.

Dazzled by her surroundings and too distracted to protest the low-cut black dress she found clinging to her body, Amari studied her plate. If it was to be her last meal... well, at least it was a good one. Fluffy rolls, gravy-soaked potatoes, jam made of tart red berries, and tender white meat. Too tender. Amari frowned inwardly. _If only I had more than this dull knife in my hand right now._ The instrument was good for spreading butter and little else. Entirely inadequate to the task she'd like to apply it to.

Braun had retained his diminutive shape, but was now dressed for a grand occasion in a red dress of what Amari imagined was silk or velvet or some other material found only in books. His legs didn't reach the ground, but swung freely a full foot and a half above the marble floor. Elbows resting on the table, he dripped gravy on the white tablecloth. His drink was milk while Amari's glass held wine.

Amari sipped this delicately. Awful stuff. Bitter. Not at all what she'd expected from the ruby sparkle of the drink. "You're _really_ committed to this Betsy thing, aren't you?"

Braun waved an airy hand. "I've been hundreds of people, child. I challenge myself to not only _look_ like them, but also to become them. In a very real way, I _am_ Betsy. It amused me to take that shape, though now I grow weary of it. Perhaps it is for the best that this is almost over. One can live only so many lives." He toyed with his napkin, peering at her with an adult's cynical curiosity. "What is _your_ name? 'Mary' cannot be right; it was chosen at random for your role Your father will not yield that information, though he has reluctantly given up other secrets. Your mind is relatively open to me, but the core of who you are is a place I cannot go. Why guard it so fiercely?"

"'Mary' is close enough for government work," she shot back boldly, though her heart skipped a beat at the insinuation that he could see her thoughts. "Speaking of which, how did you earn yourself such a cushy retirement? I know enough about Vault-Tec not to question the insanity of this place, but I want to know how you earned your own personal wonderland. And why you would _want_ to spend eternity in it." Unseen beneath the table, she held her knife, testing its value as a weapon. Although she squeezed the blade as hard as Mary's soft hand would allow, it wouldn't even break the skin of her palm.

"Why?" he echoed incredulously. "Don't you understand what this _is_? It would have changed everything. Education. Military training. Entertainment. It was not _my_ brainchild, but I had invested a significant share of my resources in its development. By that last fall, there were several prototypes - of which this vault was the most significant - but these were limited in scope and availability. Government installations, mainly."

Seeing that Amari still looked confused, he burst out, "Time, child! Time! A hundred years in a day, a thousand in a week! Time to educate yourself in every subject under the sun. To run scenarios of potential strategies and outcomes. Given enough fine-tuning and computing power, it could be the perfect laboratory to carry out dangerous experiments safely. _Anything_ would have been possible. I myself have spent eons plumbing those depths, gone further than any human being has gone before."

Dawning awareness made her want to laugh. "Time to train soldiers with well-documented military campaigns. Like… oh, let's see… Operation Anchorage. Realistic combat experience without the risk. I've done it," she said with unfeigned pride. "Completed the scenario, I mean. It wasn't as responsive as this one. Less of a sandbox and more of an obstacle course. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy..."

Reading the interest in his eyes, she explained how she came to cheat the puzzle. Meanwhile, she experimented with her fork. The tine, though it tapered to a blunted tip, was just sharp enough to pierce the pad of her thumb if she bore down on it. The pain _felt_ real. There was damage to the skin. She blotted a tiny bead of red surreptitiously on her napkin. _Even if I can't kill him, I can hurt him. That's something._

He eyed her with something like respect. "You are not without your hidden depths, Miss Wilder. Yes. Mine was constructed with a far superior engine, but they grew out of the same technological potential. With the right training and a well-honed strength of will and concentration, a pocket universe becomes putty in your hands. Yes, I wanted that. I deserved it. It was my reward for a lifetime of service. My body might have gone on another five years, but-"

"Excuse me," she interrupted. "May I have a steak instead? This, whatever it is, tastes good, but I've always wanted to try beef. It doesn't seem likely I'll have another chance." _And I'll need a better knife, please and thank you._

The child scowled at her with irritation. "Very well. If you insist." He snapped his fingers. " _Serveuse!_ "

Their waitress, her gaunt frame now wrapped in a clean costume of black and white, shuffled toward the table, plainly terrified. In her hands was a new dish, this one filled with beef, potatoes, and vegetables Amari didn't recognize. As the trembling woman laid the new setting before her, Amari tried to catch her eye and give her a smile of encouragement. The withered woman shook her head a fraction, and stepped back into a servile attitude.

"Will there be anything else?" She twitched as if stung by a fly, breaking character. "Please, Overseer, I'm _tired_."

"Then you are dismissed," said Braun, now sounding petulant. "I'm done with you." He snapped his fingers again and there was a column of flame where before there had been a human being. Her screams didn't last long. Nor did the smell of burning meat, hair, and clothing. Frozen in her seat, Amari didn't realize she had missed her opportunity until the fire was gone.

Braun plucked a green bean from his plate and ate it with his fingers. "She was a thorn in my side from the beginning. Batty old hag. She must have been some general's favorite spinster aunt to get on a vault list. How is your food, Mary? I hope the steak is more to your liking. I daresay the cost was higher than you'd expected."

"It is the best I've ever eaten," Amari said dumbly, trying not to look at the heap of fine gray ash on the otherwise spotless floor. "Food like this doesn't exist anymore. Nor a room like this one. Or clothes like we're wearing." Though all of her hunger had vanished, she sawed away at the cursed steak, willing the knife to become sharp rather than serrated. If she could bleed - if the old woman could burn - then perhaps Braun could be hurt. Perhaps he could be killed. "We still live on the scraps of what your lot left behind." It was easier to take him to task for the War than for the murder he'd committed in front of her, and she doubled down on it "They call it the Wasteland, you know. Cannibals, mutants, and ghouls abound."

Braun winced in the manner of a man receiving unpleasant news. "O brave new world that has such… _ahem_ , 'people' in it. Did my G.E.C.K. not find its proper use?" At Amari's annoyed and puzzled look, he changed the subject. "Does it begin to heal, at least? The land? Think what you want of me, but I was not one of the bomb-makers. Quite the contrary."

Amari thought about Megaton, a settlement hammered together from old aircraft, poisoned by a bomb at its heart. About Rivet City, a boat gone aground in waters no one could drink. About the Brotherhood, the remnants of a once-grand military force that was now incapable of dealing with the monsters that the land generated.

"Not that I can tell." She kept her voice calm, but a thrill of excitement and terror spread from her fingertips. The slender metal object in her hand had lengthened slightly, becoming heavier, its edge growing keen rather than jagged. The blade slid all the way through the meat unexpectedly and scratched the china plate below. She spoke quickly to cover the sound. "Maybe it _is_ better, elsewhere. I haven't seen much of the world after all. I lived the first nineteen years of my life in a vault, remember."

"Yes, yes," he said absently. "Your father said. 101. 'We're born in the vault. We die in the vault. Blessed be the the Overseer.' One of the more unimaginative ones. It's a pity you were cloistered there." Looking less like a child than he ever had, Braun leaned back in his chair and stared into space, scratching a chin that _should_ have sprouted scratchy whiskers. "I would have liked to talk to you about what little you have seen, but I can extend this time only so much. Your friends on the outside may act at any moment and I can't let you slip through my fingers. It is time for me to end this on my own terms."

"You could let me go. James as well. We still have bodies to return to, unlike the rest." Revealing the agitation she felt, Amari pushed her chair back and stood. She rested both hands on the table, the improved knife concealed under the messy tangle of her napkin. She could feel the flat of the blade under her wrist and she calculated the movements and the distance required. "There's no need to hurt any of us, really. Clock out yourself and let the rest of us choose." She held her breath and wrapped her fingers around her weapon. She was prepared to act either way - the reproach of the ashes on the floor left her no other choice - but she did want to hear his answer. It might make what she was about to do less of a nightmare.

The grandfatherly smile looked very strange on the childish face. "There _is_ a need, my dear. It gives me pleasure to see your suffering and I have the power - and the right - to pursue what pleases me. That is all the justification I need." He held up his hand imperiously, the thumb and fingers poised for one last _snap_. "Any last words?"

His callousness and her peril gave her the strength to act decisively for once in her life. Reminding herself that this was _not_ a child, but an inhuman, inhumane monster that didn't deserve mercy, she lunged first for the neck, somehow managing only superficial damage. All delicacy forgotten, she tried again. She stabbed. She cut. It seemed as if she'd forgotten everything she knew about anatomy, but she could hardly help but hit _something_ vital. These panicked flailings had only one goal: to prevent Braun from forcing her to die with him. Amari found that human flesh was _much_ more unyielding than perfectly-cooked meat and the hot blood that drenched her fingers almost made her drop the weapon. _It's not murder_ , she told herself again and again. _It's surgery._ She didn't realize until it was over that she'd been reciting this litany out loud.

When the deed was done, the weak little arms long past their ineffectual struggle, Amari took stock of what she had done. She gagged at the sigh of the blood ( _So much blood!_ ) that stained her clothes and arms, at the body that lay sprawled half under the table, the face mercifully hidden from view, the pink dress sodden down the front where she'd unsuccessfully and unnecessarily tried to saw through the windpipe. She prayed that Braun would turn back into the shriveled old man she imagined him to be - one she could hate and kill without aversion - but he didn't. He had died a little girl and a little girl he remained. She forced herself to guard the fallen nightmare for a moment in anticipation of a resurrection that never came.

 _Overseer Mary_ , the universe whispered to her. _Congratulations on your promotion._

"Thank you," she answered with a calm she certainly didn't feel. She stood up and flung the knife away from her, as hard as she could. It skittered a long way across the slick floor, leaving a streak of red behind. "Please clean up this mess and summon the others for a meeting." She thought for a moment. "Release James Wilder from his pod first and stretch out the next minute for as long as you can. I have business to finish here." _And I don't want him to hear._

o - o - o - o - o

The dwellers of Vault 112 looked nothing like the various shapes Braun had crammed them into. Their self-perception had apparently degraded so much that some barely resembled people. Amari realized with an unpleasant shock that there were far more residents here than she'd realized. _Just how many pods are there?_ As expected, Old Lady Dithers was not among those assembled.

"He's dead," Amari announced loudly, speaking as quickly as she could, absently rubbing her arms to get rid of the blood that had already disappeared. Once James had awoken, Cross and Richard would pull her out as well and she had no way of knowing if her request for time would be heeded. Chilly formality borrowed from her father - a tone she had always detested in him - crept into her voice. "Braun is dead. The vault has made me Overseer, a position I do not intend to hold for long. Each of you may choose what happens next. You can choose a quiet, painless death, or…" she trailed off. _You're so damn cold, Amari._ _Give them a minute._

"That's what I want," Mr. Neusbaum said stolidly, his arm around his son.

Timmy, still appearing as a child, though almost transparent in the light of the dining hall, whispered, "Me too."

Others chorused their agreement with words, grunts, and gestures. About half seemed to have lost the ability to form words.

Amari blinked. "...or you can elect a better leader from your number and create a better world for yourselves.

"That's what _I_ want," a familiar voice spoke out of the crowd. "I want to be Overseer. We've… we've talked about it among ourselves already, those of us who can still talk, anyway. We've talked about this for a _very long time_. I'm the _only_ one who wants to stay."

"Okay," Amari said weakly. "Well, I suppose then… uh… I just killed Braun with a _knife_. I guess I could-"

Suzie rolled her eyes. "Give me the keys to the kingdom. No, not _literal_ keys. Abdicate and I'll take care of the rest. With all due gratitude and respect, it's not your place."

Amari didn't hesitate. God knew she didn't want the job. Suzie - _Overseer_ Suzie, Amari reminded herself - made short work of the disagreeable task. First, she created a wall. Then she summoned a button, green and round and made of soft rubber. Each of the residents in turn stepped up, accepted whatever privte word or gesture passed between them and Suzie, then chose death. The last two, hunched lumps of flesh with only the suggestion of limbs, she had to carry to the spot.

"Suzie, I don't know if that's ethical," Amari said suddenly. "Surely they can't consent." She wasn't sure why _this_ was where she wanted to draw the line, but she'd witnessed one too many horrors in the last hour not to say something.

The tear-glazed glare the other woman shot her silenced any further admonition. Suzie hugged each of the homunculi tenderly, then lifted what remained of their hands to the button.

"Goodbye. I don't blame you for bringing us here. You only wanted to keep us safe. _I'm_ still alive, aren't I?" A moment and they, too, were gone. Suzie stood, looked blearily around the now-empty room, and walked back to Amari, her back straight and proud.

"You're leaving now?"

Suzie had asked politely, but the question sounded more like a command. Of all of them, she may have been the most human, the most resilient, but Amari thought that wouldn't last in her newly solitary life, though it was clearly solitude she was looking for. Suzie looked at Amari as if Amari were a guest who had overstayed her welcome.

"Right now I need to rest. I need to do something besides lie down and dream." Amari looked over her shoulder, as if expecting an EXIT sign to appear. "However, I do plan to linger in the vault for a few weeks," she continued slowly, having just decided in that moment that she would do exactly that. The potential for self-improvement which Braun had described for him was too tempting an opportunity to pass up. "My formal education was inadequate and I can learn a great deal in a short amount of time here. I ask only for control over a room of my own and permission to come and go as I please. You won't see me if you don't want to."

Suzie sighed and dropped her gaze, letting her shoulders collapse in defeat. "I suppose you've earned that much. Will there be others after you?"

Amari knew the answer as well as Suzie did. "I don't have a say in that. Yes. An organization called the Brotherhood of Steel - allies of mine, sort of - have an interest in Pre-War experiments and technology. They will probably want to interview you at some point. They'll be curious about where you came from, how you came to be here, as much as you can remember."

"They just wanted us to live," Suzie said defensively. Her appearance momentarily flickered into the form of the child she had been. "That's all. Survival at all costs, right? It must seem stupid to you. Well, my parents did their best. I won't let anybody say otherwise. "

Amari was puzzled at the ferocity of this unprovoked non sequitur and defense. "Not at all. My ancestors made the same choice. I'm from a vault myself, you know. A… uh, a normal one." Her face grew hot. "I mean, you know one where people actually _lived_."

"How interesting," the new Overseer said blandly, her face resolving into a perfectly blank mask. "You must tell me more about that another time. Thank you, Mary. Give your father my best regards. He tried to help as well. Enjoy your _life_."

Amari found herself wanting to come clean to her former friend and balance the scales between them somehow. "He's not really my-" She didn't get to finish her sentence. A jerk and a flash of light, and she found herself back in the near-darkness of the pod and the heaviness of her real body.

o - o - o - o - o

She was able to sit up without help this time and the anticipated disorientation lasted only a minute. Her body was less stiff than it had been last time. Perhaps the task had taken only an hour or two. She stretched and took advantage of the exercise to study her surroundings out of the corner of her eye. A middle-aged man in a vault suit was sitting on the floor near the stairwell, leaning against the wall while Cross crouched beside him. Knowing she could delay no longer, Amari took a deep breath and made her approach; the weakness in her legs had little to do with her recent bouts of inactivity.

The Wasteland had transformed James into a lean, haggard version of the man she'd known, and he'd swapped the clean-shaven look for an overgrown beard. She would have recognized him and his voice anywhere.

"Who are you? Where's Marilyn?"

Cross looked concerned, but Amari wasn't surprised or even insulted. The last face she'd seen in a mirror had been all Amari and no Amata.

"Marilyn's dead," she said brightly. It felt wonderful, like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulders. She said it again, "She died last summer." She'd forgotten something, but remembered in time for courtesy. "Sorry for your loss." She started toward the stairs and Richard moved to flank her.

Amari was already miles away by the time she finished speaking. _I wonder if Deacon will still be in Rivet City in three weeks? How far is the Commonwealth, anyway?_

"Amata? Is that you?" It seemed as if James hadn't heard what she'd said. His incredulity stopped her short. "What are _you_ doing here? How on earth did you get out? And _why_?"

If it had _only_ been surprise, she would have let it go. The audible contempt, however, broke a long-held tenet of hers: basic human decency. Something in her went cold and she turned to confront him. "My father gave his men free rein - and guns - to control the chaos… that you left behind. _Sir_. I made myself his enemy by throwing my lot in with Mari's, much good it did her. I became an exile for no reason."

"No." Ah. Denial and anger were catching up; he was getting closer to the truth. "You're wrong. The radio - the news from Megaton - said that the girl from the vault was looking for her father. Looking for _me_. You must be mistaken."

"No, Three Dog was misinformed. Moriarty took me for her, and I was too afraid of him to correct his assumption. The lie grew from there. Even Dr. Li thought the same. I'm sorry that you heard the story and believed it. But she's dead, I promise you. I saw the body. She didn't make it past the door."

She should have stopped there. She'd already dealt a terrible blow and didn't need to rub salt in the wound. Pent-up anger boiled over and words of condemnation came out in a rapid stream of words.

"You shouldn't have come to our vault. Not if you were going to leave twenty years later. Yes, our society was crumbling. Yes, the experiment was doomed to failure. Even so, it should have been an internal choice to end it or not. You forced my father to take drastic action. You left your daughter to the mercy of a desperate, frightened, unhinged man. You should have taken her with you. Then we wouldn't be here today. _It wasn't just her who died_." She steeled herself against what remained of pity and voiced the truth that had been buried in the back of her mind for many months. "I think you killed my mother when you convinced Almodovar to open the door to you. _That's_ why he hated you. The timeline checks out. You deserve the pain you're feeling now."

" _Amari_ ," Cross growled, "that's enough. Leave him alone. He knows what he's done."

"I don't think he does," she snapped back. But Amari was done. What was the point? She climbed the stairs and left the stunned man behind, wondering why she'd ever admired him, wanted to be like him. He was no better than Almodovar. More sane, but just as selfish. _I've lost two fathers now_. _Time to grow up._

James' anguish should have overshadowed joy, but the relief that washed over Amari drowned out the sympathy she should have felt. Her quest was over. She'd delivered the message that had burdened her since the day she'd lost everything. Amata - and Marilyn - could rest in peace now. She herself felt empty, but that wasn't a bad thing; emptiness could be filled with experiences and knowledge. Life beckoned her. In the short term, food, water, and sleep were warranted. She'd earned them. Then, onto something more than aimless wandering. She hoped.

Not an hour later, Cross shook her out of a pleasant, dreamless sleep.

"What the hell was that? That was _cruel._ I had to sedate him in the end; he's very weak and you did your best to finish him off. If I had known you were capable of something like that, I would have gagged you myself."

Sitting up reluctantly, Amari blinked sleepily at the soldier. "What do you mean? I told him the truth. I had nothing to add to it. You're his friend. Go comfort him. I want nothing to do with James Wilder. If I never speak to him again, I'll die happy."

"There's nothing I can say to that man that means anything right now. You told him he killed his own daughter!"

"He _did_. Given thirty seconds to think, he would have seen it himself. By leaving, he as good as sealed her fate. He should have known what our Overseer was like." Amari stood and backed away warily. Angry Cross was scary. Angry Cross could pull off her head if she wanted to. She knew on some level that the woman had enough self-control not to hurt her, but she still felt safer at a distance.

" _Your_ _father_ killed her," Cross reminded her with exaggerated mock-patience.

The soldier clearly didn't understand how much had changed in the past hour. "No. That was _Amata's_ father. I'm Amari, remember? Amari is stronger. Maybe Amari _is_ cruel," she speculated, considering the idea for the first time. She shrugged. "That remains to be seen."

No longer in the mood for sleep, she turned her back on Cross's bewildered, disappointed stare and beckoned Richard to accompany her to the surface. The Pip-Boy told her disoriented sense of time that it was mid-morning on the last day of February. A walk in the real world would do her good. She was free. She could do anything and be anyone she wanted. Her first life had ended, short, miserable, and unhappy though it was; only now could the next begin.


End file.
